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THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION 
SOCIETY 1817-1840 



THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION 
SOCIETY 1817-1840 



BY 
EARLY LEE FOX 



A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to the Board of University Studies of The Johns 

Hopkins University in conformity with the Requirements 

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 

1917 



Baltimore 
1919 



Copyright 19 19 by 
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS 

Gift 
zersitr 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 

LANCASTER, PA. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Preface vii 

Introduction 9 

Chapter I. The Free Negro and the Slave 13 

Chapter II. Organization, Purpose, Early Years ... 46 
Chapter III. American Colonization and Garrisonian 

Abolition 125 

Chapter IV. Colonization and Emancipation 180 

Chapter V. Colonization and the African Slave Trade 215 



PREFACE 

The following study was undertaken at the suggestion of 
Professor John H. Latane, of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity. It is a genuine pleasure for me to acknowledge and 
express my thanks for the interest he has shown at every 
stage of the work. As a result of his instruction, together 
with that of Professor J. M. Vincent, also of the Johns 
Hopkins University, I have come to appreciate, I hope, the 
importance of a critical evaluation of historical evidence. 
My thanks are also due those connected with the Manu- 
scripts Division of the Library of Congress, where most of 
the research work was done, and particularly to Mr. Fitz- 
patrick, whose courtesy I shall not soon forget. Rev. M. L. 
Fearnow very kindly read a portion of the manuscript and 
suggested several changes. 

E. L. F. 



THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 
1817-1840 



INTRODUCTION 

It is just a century since a group of men of distinguished 
talents came together in the city of Washington for an inter- 
change of views on the solution of the negro problem. The 
result was the organization of the American Colonization 
Society. From the time of its inception the Society ap- 
pealed to men in every walk of life and from every section 
of the Union. The whole movement was in response to a 
national, not a sectional sentiment. From the day of its 
birth to the day when, by the proclamation of the president, 
the slaves in the South were set free, leaders of thought and 
framers of national policy looked to this organization to 
save them from what Jefferson had called the fire bell in 
the night. 

Between the Missouri Compromise and John Brown's 
raid there were few platforms upon which representative 
men from New England, the West, and the upper South 
could stand and discuss dispassionately the negro problem. 
But upon the platform of the Colonizationists they could, 
and did, stand. On that platform stood Daniel Webster of 
Massachusetts and William H. Crawford of Georgia, Elisha 
Whittlesey of Ohio and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New 
Jersey. There Elijah Paine, that distinguished farmer, 
jurist, and philanthropist of Vermont, could, in common 
with his neighbor, Roger M. Sherman of Connecticut, talk 
with the owner of three hundred slaves, William H. Fitz- 
hugh of Virginia. There stood Francis Scott Key, Charles 
Fenton Mercer, John Marshall, and James Monroe. There 
the author of the Olive Branch made common cause with 



IO THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the editor of the North American Review. There James 
Madison, the father of the Constitution, was of the same 
mind as was Abraham Lincoln, who stood as the guardian 
of a national spirit which that time honored instrument had 
done so much to create. 

The organization of the Methodist Church was rent in 
twain over the question of slavery; but Bishop Beverly 
Waugh, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a Coloni- 
zationist in common with Bishop John C. Granberry, of the 
Southern Methodists ; and these made common cause with 
Bishop Clark of Rhode Island and Bishop Meade of Vir- 
ginia, both of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Waldo of 
Massachusetts, and McDonogh of New Orleans, contrib- 
uted many thousands of dollars for the cause. Presidents 
McLean of Princeton, Duer of Columbia, Day of Yale, 
Everett and Sparks of Harvard, were all Colonizationists. 
Richard Rush, John Eager Howard, Henry Rutgers, John 
Taylor of Caroline, General George Mason, General Walter 
Jones, Robert Ralston, Benjamin F. Butler of New York, 
John Tyler, Henry A. Wise, J. J. Crittenden, Abel P. Up- 
shur, M. C. Perry, and Levi Lincoln, men who thought dif- 
ferently along many lines, all supported the colonization 
movement. 

The decade, 1830-1840, witnessed the development of 
large areas of the Southwest, and with the economic change 
came a fundamental change in the point of view of the 
South toward slavery. Professor Dew's contribution in 
the "Pro-Slavery Argument" is indicative of a lamentable 
change that was coming over the mind and conscience of the 
South. If ever, during the nineteenth century, conditions 
in the United States called for the leadership of men of 
foresight and moderation to set forth convincingly the evils 
of the system that was getting its hold on the South, that 
time was 1831 and the ten years following. The Coloniza- 
tionists, both Northern and Southern, attempted to provide 
just such men and just such leadership. It was with the 
secret cooperation of the American Colonization Society 



INTRODUCTION I I 

that Jesse Burton Harrison, a native of Virginia who was 
then living in New Orleans, contributed to the American 
Quarterly Review his "Review of the Slave Question," 
which was intended to counteract the undoubtedly great in- 
fluence of Professor Dew's argument. Harrison appealed 
to the Southern States, and particularly Virginia, to throw 
off that greatest hindrance to economic development. What 
would have been the result if such a campaign as that begun 
by Harrison had been allowed to go on unobstructed for a 
decade or a generation it is not possible to say ; but that this 
was precisely an important part of the program of the Colo- 
nizationists will appear in the pages which follow. 

To look upon the American Colonization Society as an 
organization whose success is to be measured solely by the 
number of shiploads of negroes taken to Africa is to mis- 
understand the whole movement. Any adequate estimate 
of the work of Colonizationists must take into account the 
effect of their program upon the preservation of national 
unity. And yet, measured concretely, the Colonization So- 
ciety was a potent factor in securing the emancipation of 
slaves, thousands of them, and would have secured the lib- 
eration of thousands more, had not the rapid expansion of 
the Southwest, the consequent increased demand for slaves, 
and the counteracting influences of hostile propagandists 
brought about the enforcement of hitherto laxly enforced 
laws and the enactment of more stringent laws prohibiting 
emancipations. 

The influence of the Society in the suppression of the 
slave trade has, it seems, been entirely overlooked ; and yet, 
there was a time in its history when it probably saved from 
transportation into slavery no fewer than twenty thousand 
native Africans a year. 

The limitations of both time and space that are neces- 
sarily imposed upon one who undertakes to make a study 
of this character have made it impracticable to present here 
a complete history of the Colonization Society. That his- 
tory covers one hundred years ; for the Society is still in 



12 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

existence, although, since the close of the Civil War, its in- 
fluence has been considerably limited and it now undertakes 
but a very small part of what it once undertook. It has 
been impracticable here to extend the study even to the 
opening of the Civil War except in the influence of the So- 
ciety upon the slave trade and upon emancipations and 
manumissions. The period covered is limited to the years 
1 817 to 1840. No one who is even tolerably acquainted 
with the Society's history after its reorganization in 1839, 
when it came under the control of the North Middle and 
New England States, can have the slightest well-founded 
suspicion that thereafter it pursued a proslavery policy. It 
has been the chief aim of the writer to set forth unequivo- 
cally its aims and purposes prior to that time. The years 
1839 and 1840 were years of severe strain upon the So- 
ciety, and some of the most persistent of its leaders were 
in low spirits during that time. This will appear at the 
close of the second chapter. But this by no means signifies 
that there were not brighter days ahead. Indeed, the So- 
ciety's resources grew rapidly from 1840 to the very begin- 
ning of the Civil War. From 1817 to 1839 Colonizationists 
looked upon their work chiefly from the point of view of 
its effect upon the solution of the negro problem in the 
United States ; after 1840 they looked upon it chiefly from 
the point of view of its effect in building upon the coast of 
Africa a model negro republic. The object, in this study, 
has been to set forth fully and completely this first period 
of its history. 



CHAPTER I 

The Free Negro and the Slave 

As late as 1825 New England had not forgotten that she 
had had a part in the introduction of negro slaves into the 
Southern States. In that year Daniel Dana, addressing the 
New Hampshire Auxiliary Colonization Society, said : 

Let us not imagine, for a moment, that we in this Northern clime, 
are exempt from that enormous guilt, connected with slavery, and 
the slave-trade, which we are so ready to appropriate to our brethren 
in distant States. We have no right thus to wash our hands. From 
New England have gone the ships and the sailors that have been pol- 
luted with this inhuman traffic. In New England are the forges 
which have framed fetters and manacles for the limbs of unoffend- 
ing Africans. The iron of New England has pierced their anguished 
souls. In New England are found the over-grown fortunes, the 
proud palaces which have been reared up from the blood and suffer- 
ings of these unhappy men. The guilt is strictly national. . . . Na- 
tional, then, let the expiation be. Let us raise up the humbled chil- 
dren of Africa from their dust. . . . Let us send them back to their 
native land. 1 

Four years later a clergyman from Maine, who hailed the 
organization of the American Colonization Society as the 
most promising means of ridding the land of slavery, but 
whose faith in its efforts was shaken on his hearing that 
plantation owners who had not set free their slaves were 
prominent in the movement, made the following confession : 

With many others of the Northern people, I have long enter- 
tained erroneous views. I have supposed that slavery was an evil 
confined merely to the slave-holder himself, and that he might and 
ought immediately to manumit his slaves. But I am convinced that 
slavery is a National sin ! that we, who are so far removed from the 
scene of its abominations, partake of its guilt 1 that it is an evil 
which is entailed upon the present generation of slave-holders, which 
they must suffer, whether they will or not ; and therefore the North 
should aid the South, in the expense of emancipating and transport- 
ing their slaves back to the land of their fathers. 2 

1 African Repository, vol. i, p. 146. 

2 Ibid., vol. v, pp. 78-80. 

13 



14 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Professor Silliman, of Yale, called attention to the fact 
that had New England, New York, New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania been cotton producing States, the slave system 
would have been fastened on them " to the full extent of 
profitable employment," and he added : 

Neither can it be denied that the slave trade, for the supply of 
the South, was carried on by too many persons in the North. . . . 

Slavery is now generally acknowledged, in this country, to be an 
enormous evil. . . . costly to the proprietor, ... a source of increas- 
ing domestic danger; an insult to the purity of our religion and an 
outrage on the Majesty of Heaven. This language is not stronger 
than that which lately resounded in the Capital of Virginia. This is 
not the proper occasion to discuss the project of the entire and im- 
mediate abolition of slavery; it is enough that it is, at present, im- 
practicable; nor will we take upon us, to reprehend with severity, 
the intemperate, uncourteous and unchristian language with which 
the friends of Colonization are from certain [abolition] quarters, 
assailed through the press. . . . Should their attempt fail, through 
the unfair and unjust opposition of its enemies, the latter will have 
much to answer for, to Africa itself, and to the African race in this 
country, and to the world. 3 

The attitude of the upper South toward the question of 
negro slavery went through three distinct and important 
phases from colonial times to the beginning of the Civil 
War. The period from the beginning to the close of the 
eighteenth century may be considered approximately the 
period of the first phase, when the colonies sought from the 
king relief from the alarming growth of the slave system. 
Of this period, suffice it here to say that the single colony 
of Virginia passed twenty-three acts whose object was the 
suppression of the evils of slavery. All these came to 
naught as the result of the royal veto. 4 The third period 
extended from 1835 or l &4° to the beginning of the Civil 
War. This was the period during which the South was 
definitely and frankly set on the continuation of the slave 
system. It was the period between the years 1800, and par- 
ticularly between 181 5, and 1835 or 1840, that claims special 
attention in this study. If during the first period the evils 
were clearly anticipated and the system called forth pro- 
tests, if during the last period the visions of Southerners 

3 Ibid., vol. viii, pp. 161-187. 

4 Ibid., 1828, pp. 172-179. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 1 5 

were blurred as a result of a supposed economic self-interest 
and resentment at the course of radical Abolitionists, during 
the middle period slavery was looked upon by leaders of 
thought in the South and in the North as one of the great 
national problems that pressed for a solution. The Ameri- 
can Colonization Society undoubtedly came into being as a 
result of this point of view. The men who are to be con- 
sidered its founders recognized in both the free negro and 
the slave a momentous problem, and the aim of Coloniza- 
tionists was to find a satisfactory solution of it. The aim 
of the writer is to present here fairly and fully the nature 
of that problem. 

South Carolina and Georgia, and a large part of Alabama, 
never engaged with enthusiasm in the work of Colonization. 
The Southwestern States were but recently admitted into 
the Union. It was that group of States stretching from, 
and including, New York at the North, to, and including, 
North Carolina at the South, and from the Atlantic sea- 
board to the western limit of Kentucky, that seemed to un- 
derstand fully the gravity of that problem; yet throughout 
the first thirty years of the nineteenth century the evils of 
slavery were admitted by well nigh every State in the Union. 

Then, why did not the slaveholding States at this time 
abolish slavery? Because they did not know how; because 
the abolition of slavery was the greatest problem the South 
had ever been called on to face ; because no man had sug- 
gested a plan that seemed capable of execution. As late as 
1828, J. B. Harrison, of Virginia, a man who had traveled 
a great deal in his State and who spoke with authority, de- 
clared : " Almost all masters in Virginia assent to the propo- 
sition, that when the slaves can be liberated without danger 
to ourselves, and to their own advantage, it ought to be 
done." 5 

As early as 1804, Dr. William Thornton, the versatile and 
distinguished friend of Washington, wrote : " I condemn 
not, but feel for the situation of the possessors of slaves. 

6 Ibid., 1828, p. 305. 



1 6 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

It is a misery entailed on them by those who did not deeply 
study the laws of humanity, and who depended too implicitly 
on laws grounded in impolicy and excluding justice." 6 And 
Gerrit Smith, who later became an ardent Abolitionist, said, 
in 1828: "I am certainly far from reproaching our slave- 
holders with the peculiar relation in which they stand to- 
wards some of their hapless fellow creatures. It is not the 
fault of most of those slaveholders. Most of them were 
born to that relation. Many of them sincerely deplore this 
part of their inheritance." 7 President Nott, of Union Col- 
lege, said, in 1829: "Our Brethren of the South, have the 
sympathies, the same moral sentiments, the same love of 
liberty as ourselves. By them, as by us, slavery is felt to 
be an evil, a hindrance to our prosperity, and a blot upon 
our character. But it was in being when they were born 
and has been forced upon them by a previous generation." 8 
In 1827 C. F. Mercer reported for a committee of the House 
of Representatives, in reply to memorials of the friends of 
Colonization : 

In many States . . . [the] total number [of slaves] was, as it still 
continues to be, so great, that universal or general emancipation 
could not be hazarded, without endangering a convulsion fatal to 
the peace of society. . . . Nowhere in America . . . has emancipa- 
tion elevated the colored race to perfect equality with the white ; and 
in many States the disparity is so great that it may be questioned 
whether the condition of the slave, while protected by his master, 
however degraded in itself, is not preferable to that of the free 
negro. [And yet, even in these States,] the principle of voluntary 
emancipation has operated to a much greater extent than the laws 
themselves, or the principle of coercion upon the master has ever 
done, even among those States who had no danger whatever to ap- 
prehend from the speedy and universal extension of human liberty. 9 

In a letter received from a gentleman in Massachusetts 
by the secretary of the Colonization Society in 1826, we find 
this statement: 

The late, and more frequent emancipations in the middle and 
southern States, is producing a very happy influence on the public 

6 William Thornton Papers, MS., vol. xiv, "Letter to a Friend," 
1804. 

'Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., G. Smith to R. 
R. Gurley, Nov. 17, 1828. 

8 African Repository, vol. v, pp. 277-278. 

9 27th Cong., 3d sess., House Report no. 283, pp. 408-414. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE \J 

mind, generally in this part of the country. They give a spring to 
public sentiment, and they teach this great lesson, which we north- 
erners are beginning to understand, that many slaveholders retain 
their slaves not because they love slavery; but because they cannot 
better the condition of their slaves by emancipating them. . . . The 
south and the north, I am fully persuaded, after having recently 
traveled thro' nearly all the states of this happy Union, are approach- 
ing every day towards the same views in reference to this whole sub- 
ject of our African population, both the bond and the free. ... The 
influence of your Society on public sentiment is the main thing. . . . 10 

The following comment appeared in the New York Tract 
Magazine : 

What is the condition and character of those who are emancipated? 
... In general black people gain little, in many instances they are 
great losers, by emancipation. Law may relieve them from slavery, 
but laws cannot change their colour. 11 

In 1818, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 
at its meeting in Philadelphia, declared : 

We do, indeed, tenderly sympathize with those portions of our 
church and our country, where the evil of slavery has been entailed 
upon them ; where a great, and the most virtuous part of the com- 
munity abhor slavery, and wish its extermination, as sincerely as 
any other; but where the number of slaves, their ignorance, and 
their vicious habits generally, render an immediate and universal 
emancipation inconsistent, alike, with the safety and happiness of 
the master and the slave. 12 

A most valuable contribution to the discussion of this 
whole subject is to be found in a letter from Francis Scott 
Key to Benjamin Tappan, in 1838. At a general confer- 
ence of Congregational Churches the question of slavery was 
up for discussion. It was proposed to appoint a commit- 
tee to correspond with prominent Southerners, in an effort 
to find out the true sentiments of that section on the subject 
of slavery. Tappan put to Key a number of definite ques- 
tions. Key prefaced his reply by saying that he had been 
born and reared in Maryland, a slaveholding State, but " No 
Northern man began the world with more enthusiasm 
against slavery than I did. For forty years and upwards, I 
have felt the greatest desire to see Maryland become a free 

10 African Repository, vol. ii, pp. 121-122. 

11 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 91-92. 

12 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 272-276. 



l8 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

State, and the strongest conviction that she could become 
so." For he believed that "no slave State adjacent to a 
free State can continue so," the superiority of free, over 
slave, labor being so clearly demonstrated, and the power of 
public sentiment being so strong that gradual emancipation 
would always result. He continues : 

I have emancipated seven of my slaves. They have done pretty 
well, and six of them, now alive, are supporting themselves com- 
fortably and creditably. Yet I cannot but see that this is all they 
are doing now; and, when age and infirmity come upon them, they 
will probably suffer. It is to be observed, also, that these were 
selected individuals, who were, with two exceptions, brought up with 
a view to their being so disposed of, and were made to undergo a 
probation of a few years in favorable situations, and, when emanci- 
pated, were far better fitted for the duties and trials of their new 
condition than the general mass of slaves. Yet I am still a slave- 
holder, and could not, without the greatest inhumanity, be otherwise. 
I own, for instance, an old slave, who has done no work for me for 
years. I pay his board and other expenses, and cannot believe that 
I sin in doing so. 

The laws of Maryland contain provisions of various kinds, under 
which slaves, in certain circumstances, are entitled to petition the 
courts for their freedom. As a lawyer, I always undertook these 
cases with peculiar zeal, and have been thus instrumental in liber- 
ating several large families and many individuals. I cannot remem- 
ber more than two instances, out of this large number, ih which it 
did not appear that the freedom I so earnestly sought for them was 
their ruin. It has been so with a very large proportion of all others 
I have known emancipated. 

Tappan's first question was : " Does the opinion generally 
prevail among the ministers and members of southern 
churches that slaveholding as practised in this country, is 
sanctioned by the Word of God? If this is not their opin- 
ion, how do they justify themselves in holding slaves?" 
Key's reply was that he thought that the Bible neither sanc- 
tioned slaveholding, under all circumstances, nor prohibited 
slaveholding, under all circumstances. The golden rule 
should be applied in each particular case. He continued : 

Hundreds and thousands of Christians, showing in their whole life, 
undoubted evidences of the faith which they profess, have so applied 
this rule to their consciences, and so come to this conclusion. Their 
brethren at the North, knowing nothing of the peculiar circum- 
stances under which they have acted, nor of the care and faithful- 
ness with which they have inquired and decided, call upon them to 
justify themselves for violating the sanctions of God's Word. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 1 9 

Key pointed out conditions under which slaveholding was 
in his opinion a duty. For instance, a man inherits, through 
no fault of his own, an old slave, too old to work or to care 
for himself. So also, in the case of a slave by nature so 
indolent and intemperate that without restraint he would be 
wretched himself and a burden to others^ So, too, in the 
case of a slave purchased in order that he might not be sold 
in one of the distant States, and thus separated from a wife 
and family who lived on a neighboring plantation; or, in 
the case of the purchase by one man of the slave of another, 
in order to save the slave from cruel and unjust treatment. 

Another question put to Key was: "Do professors of 
religion forfeit their christian character by buying and sell- 
ing slaves, as they may find it convenient? or do they sub- 
ject themselves to censure and discipline by any immorality 
or ill treatment of which they might be guilty towards their 
slaves ? " The reply was : 

The persons among us who buy and sell slaves for profit are never, 
as I have ever heard or believe, professors of religion. Such con- 
duct, or any immorality or ill treatment towards their slaves, would 
forfeit their Christian character and privileges, if their minister did 
his duty. And nothing more disgraces a man, in general estimation, 
than to be guilty of any immorality or ill treatment towards his 
slaves. 18 

DeTocqueville, that keen observer of American institu- 
tions, expressed sentiments of great value to those who had 
ears to hear. He demonstrated beyond a doubt, that the 
abolition of slavery in the South was a far different prob- 
lem from, and a far graver problem than, its abolition in 
the North. This was true (i) because the climate of the 
South was far more favorable to slave labor than the cli- 
mate of the North; (2) because of the nature of the North- 
ern and of the Southern crops, the former requiring atten- 
tion only at intervals, the latter requiring almost constant 
attention; (3) because of the tendency of slavery to move 
toward the South. 

He pointed out the fact that in 1830 there was in Maine 

13 Ibid., vol. xv, pp. 1 13-125. 



20 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

only one negro for every three hundred of the whites ; in 
Massachusetts one negro for every one hundred; in Vir- 
ginia forty-two for every one hundred; in South Carolina 
fifty-five for every one hundred. And his conclusion was 
that " the most Southern States of the Union cannot abolish 
slavery without incurring very great danger, which the 
North had no reason to apprehend when it emancipated its 
black population." " The Northern States had nothing to 
fear from the contrast, because in them the blacks were few 
in number, and the white population was very considerable. 
But if this faint dawn of freedom were to show two mil- 
lions of men their true position, the oppressors would have 
reason to tremble." He disclaimed any sympathy with the 
principle of negro slavery, but said : 

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery 
as a means of warding off the [to him, inevitable] struggle of the 
two races in the United States. The negroes may long remain slaves 
without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of free 
men, they will soon revolt at being deprived of all civil rights ; and 
as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily 
declare themselves as enemies. In the North everything contributed 
to the emancipation of the slaves ; and slavery was abolished, with- 
out placing the free negroes in a position which could become for- 
midable, since their number was too small for them to claim the 
exercise of their rights. But such is not the case in the South. The 
question of slavery was a question of commerce and manufacture 
for the slave-owners in the North ; for those of the South, it is a 
question of life and death. 

When I contemplate the condition of the South, I can only dis- 
cover two alternatives which may be adopted by the white inhabi- 
tants of those States; viz., either to emancipate the negroes, and to 
intermingle with them ; or, remaining isolated from them, to keep 
them in a state of slavery as long as possible. All intermediate 
measures seem to me likely to terminate, and that shortly, in the 
most horrible of civil wars, and perhaps in the extirpation of one 
or other of the two races. 14 

In a memorial from the Colonization Society to Congress 
in 1819, the following sentiment is expressed: 

_ If one of these consequences [that is, a consequence of Coloniza- 
tion] shall be the gradual and almost imperceptible removal of a 
national evil, which all unite in lamenting, and for which, with the 
most intense, but hitherto hopeless, anxiety the patriots and states- 
men of our country have laboured to discover a remedy, who can 

14 DeTocqueville, Democracy in America, D. Appleton and Com- 
pany, ed. of 1904, vol. i, pp. 383-404. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 21 

doubt, that of all the things we may be permitted to bequeath to our 
descendants, this will receive the richest tribute of their thanks and 
veneration? Your memorialists cannot believe that such an evil, 
universally acknowledged and deprecated, has been irremovably fixed 
upon us. Some way will always be opened by Providence, by which 
a people, desirous of acting justly and benevolently, may be led to 
the attainment of a meritorious object. 15 

Dr. William Thornton had pointed out clearly in 1804 the 
seriousness of the problem of the abolition of slavery in the 
South as compared with its abolition in the North. At that 
time he said that, in the North, the comparatively few slaves 
were so distributed among the population that a general 
emancipation fell but lightly upon each owner ; whereas, in 
the South, " it would perhaps be requiring too much from 
humanity, to expect those who hold slaves to emancipate 
them, and thus reduce their own families from affluence to 
absolute misery. And there is frequently no alternative." 
He deprecates the evils of slavery, but " it has been not only 
a query with others, but with myself, whether this partial 
good does not increase the general evil. . . . Evil therefore 
rests on evil till a mountain rises whose summit is shadowed 
by a cloud of sin." 16 And many years later Henry Clay, in 
a speech on the subject of Abolition petitions, made in the 
United States Senate, February 7, 1839, estimated the value 
of property in slaves, in the South, at $1,200,000,000 — owned 
by persons of all classes, those who could afford to emanci- 
pate their slaves and very many who could not. Slave prop- 
erty, he said, " is the subject of mortgages, deeds of trust, 
and family settlements. It has been made the basis of nu- 
merous debts contracted upon its faith, and is the sole re- 
liance, in many instances, of creditors within and without 
the slave States, for the payments of debt due to them." 17 

It is also to be observed that those proprietors who were 
most anxious to emancipate their slaves were the very ones 
from whom the slaves received the most consideration. 
Scores of instances could be noted of the proffer of their 

15 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings, MS., American Coloni- 
zatiori Society, vol. i, pp. 127-128. 
!6 Thornton Papers. 
17 African Repository, vol. xv, pp. 150-164, 



22 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

freedom, by such masters, to their slaves, and of the slave's 
refusal to go free. In succeeding pages of this study in- 
stances will also be pointed out of negroes who requested to 
be purchased by benevolent men. Rev. R. R. Gurley, sec- 
retary of the American Colonization Society, tells of an 
interesting native African sold to a South Carolina slave- 
holder. The negro's name was Moro; he was educated a 
Mohammedan. 

About twenty years ago, while scarcely able to express his thoughts 
intelligently on any subject in the English language, he fled from a 
severe master in South Carolina, and on his arrival at Fayetteville 
was seized as a runaway slave, and thrown into jail. His peculiar 
appearance, inability to converse, and particularly the facility with 
which he was observed to write a strange language attracted much 
attention, and induced his present humane and Christian master to 
take him from prison and finally, at his earnest request, to become 
his purchaser. His gratitude was boundless, and his joy to be 
imagined only by him, who has himself been relieved from the iron 
that enters the soul. Since his residence with General Owen [his 
purchaser] he has worn no bonds but those of gratitude and affec- 
tion. . . . Being of a feeble constitution, Moro's duties have been of 
the lightest kind and he has been treated rather as a friend than a 
servant. The garden has been to him a place of recreation rather 
than toil, and the concern is not that he should labor more but less. 18 

There are significant statements in a note, appended by 
himself, to the will of Reverend Thomas S. Witherspoon, 
of Alabama: 

It will be plainly seen that my intention is to liberate them [six 
slaves] by colonizing them in some of the colonies of free blacks. 
This I would do now, but they utterly refuse to leave me, protesting 
that they will not leave me until my death. ... I cannot meet death 
in peace while the consciousness of the fact is left that these faithful 
and pious servants are to be left in bondage. I feel that I am re- 
sponsible to God for them. ... I am a Presbyterian minister. . . . 
My slaves I inherited from my father and through my deceased wife, 
all but one, whom I purchased to keep him with his wife. 19 

It must not be supposed that the upper South was igno- 
rant of the comparative cost of slavery. In a report of the 
Delaware Auxiliary Colonization Society, in 1825, we find 
these words: "It [slavery] depreciates our soil, lessens our 
agricultural revenue, and like the lean kine of Egypt, eats 

18 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Board 
of Managers, May 21, 1837. 

19 Ibid., J. M. Witherspoon to the President, Dec. 15, 1845. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 23 

up the fat of the land. It will hardly admit of a question, 
but that the Southern section of our country would, in a 
few years, be richer without one slave, than it is now with 
i,6oo,ooo." 20 And two years later J. H. B. Latrobe, for 
many years President of the Colonization Society, declared : 

When white labour becomes so cheap that three men can be hired 
all the year, and ten at harvest, for less than the families of thirteen 
working negroes can be supported for (including the services of chil- 
dren), all the twelve months, to do the labour of a farm, these 
slaves will be the ruin of their possessors. This is coming to pass 
rapidly, and will be the result of the present state of things and the 
gradual increase of a white population, before many years, in all 
those States which do not cultivate rice and cotton— slave labour 
must be rendered valueless there by competition from the very place 
we are labouring to build up [Liberia] — cotton and rice cultivated 
by free labour in Africa, ought according to all politico-economical 
calculations, to undersell the cotton and rice cultivated by slave 
labour to the South; when this is the case, Carolina and her brothers 
and sisters, or, Carolina and Company, will receive a shock which 
for some years may prostrate them, but it will be like that weakness 
which is the immediate effect of a medicine which in the end cures 
the patient. 21 

In the Virginia Convention of 1829, C. F. Mercer pointed 

out the fact that, in 1817, the land of Virginia was valued 

at $206,000,000, while in 1829 the same land was valued at 

only $96,000,000; and that, while the average value of 

slaves, in Virginia, was $300 in 181 7, the average value, in 

1829, was only $150." Henry Clay, for years President of 

the Society, expressed very clearly his view in 1830. As 

the population of the United States increased, he predicted, 

the European would gain ground, numerically, over the 

negro; hence, white labor would become more abundant. 

Given enough laborers, free labor is always cheaper than 

slave labor. Therefore the value of slaves would become 

smaller and smaller ; masters would discourage the raising 

of negro children ; and slavery would become so obviously 

unprofitable that emancipations would become more and 

more common. He added : 

20 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 343-344- 

21 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Latrobe, Jan. 
5, 1827. 

22 African Repository, vol. v, p. 377- 



24 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

What has tended to sustain the price of slaves in the U. S. has 
been . . . especially the increasing demand for cotton, and the con- 
sequent increase of its cultivation. The price of cotton . . . regu- 
lates the price of slaves as unerringly as any one subject whatever 
is regulated by any standard. . . . The adult slaves will, in process 
of time, sink in value even below $100 each, I have no doubt. 23 

Mrs. Ann R. Page, than whom no more conscientious 
individual, more consistent opponent of slavery, or more 
zealous friend of the American Colonization Society lived 
in the State of Virginia, wrote, in 1831 : " The expense of 
slave estates keeps Virginians, at least many, unable to give 
freely, unless a new spirit of stronger faith and love could 
actuate them to deny accustomed self-indulgencies." "If 
ever I get out of debt, all I hope to want with money is to 
further its [the American Colonization Society's] plan." 24 
In 1834 Garritt Meriweather wrote: 

I am a slaveholder and have it in contemplation to liberate several 
of my slaves, provided, they could be removed to Liberia at a cost 
I could afford. But mine is the common misfortune of most slave- 
holders — a nominal wealth only; the shadow and not the substance, 
the reality. We may give to Freedom — to Liberia — this delusive 
property (and I dare say with the majority of masters it would be 
gain) but here would end the boon, for with them could be added 
no purse, or means of emigration or settlement. There are many, 
very many, slaveholders, I am sure, who would cheerfully relinquish 
all their slave property to Liberia, could they afford the means of 
equipment and settlement or temporary maintenance of such manu- 
mitted slaves. 25 

The dread of insurrections only added to the problem. 
In 1 791 the slaves of Hayti revolted. For a time the island 
was without a civil government; and when in 1801 there 
was an emergence of order, it was in the form of a negro 
government. In 1800, a negro, Gabriel by name, of Han- 
over County, Virginia, planned an insurrection. In 1822, 
Denmark Vesey, of Charleston, was hanged before he was 
able to execute a plot. 26 In August, 1831, the whole upper 
South was profoundly moved by the Southampton mas- 

23 Ibid., 1830, pp. 1-25. 

24 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Mrs. A. R. Page 
to the Secretary, Millwood, Va., March 26, 1831. 

25 Ibid., Meriweather t'o Gurley, April 23, 1834. 

26 A. B. Hart, Slavery and Abolition, pp. 157, 163. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 25 

sacre. In October of that year, Collin H. Minge, of Vir- 
ginia, wrote: 

I am . . . sure that there is not' an enemy to the cause of Coloni- 
zation in Virginia at this time. The predictions of Mr. Randolph 
some years since are now becoming true; the whites are running 
away from the blacks, the masters from the slaves, in lower Virginia, 
the place of insurrection. I received an intimation from a gentle- 
man yesterday to go to his house to advize his negroes, 8 in number, 
most young ones, to embark for Liberia, as he was willing to eman- 
cipate them. Our next Legislature I think will do something. 27 

The feeling of alarm that came over one of the counties 
of Virginia in which negroes were numerous is apparent 
from a petition signed by one hundred and ninety-five citi- 
zens of Northampton County and dated December 6, 183 1, 
just after the Southampton massacre. While it will be evi- 
dent, from extracts here given, that there was an urgent 
demand for the removal of the free negro, the demand arose 
rather from the fear for their personal safety among the 
citizens than from a desire to perpetuate slavery. The peti- 
tion in part follows : 

By the last census of the U. States it appears that there are in 
this county 3573 whites, 3734 slaves, and 1334 free persons of colour. 
By a comparison with the census of preceding years, it also appears 
that the proportion of free persons of colour to our white inhabi- 
tants is annually increasing. . . . The free persons of colour in Vir- 
ginia form an anomalous population, standing in a relation to our 
society, which naturally exposes them to distrust & suspicion. Infe- 
rior to the whites in intelligence & information; depraved by the 
stain which attaches to their colour ; excluded from many civil privi- 
leges which the humblest white man enjoys, and denied all partici- 
pation in the government, it would be wholly absurd to expect from 
them any attachment to our laws & institutions, or any sympathy 
with our people. On the other hand, the enjoyment of personal 
freedom is in itself a sufficient mark of distinction between them & 
our slaves, and elevates them, at least in their own opinion, to a 
higher condition in life. Standing thus in a middle position between 
the two extremes of our society and despairing of ever attaining an 
equality with the higher grade, it is natural that they should connect 
themselves in feeling & interest, with the slaves among whom many 
of their domestic ties are formed, and to whom they are bound by 
the sympathies scarcely less strong, which spring from their common 
complexion. Independent, therefore, of any particular facts calcu- 
lated to excite our alarms, the worst evils might justly be appre- 
hended from such an increase of their numbers as would give them 
confidence in their physical power, while it would enlarge their 

2T Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., C. H. Minge to 
Gurley, Oct. 22, 1831. 



26 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

means of information, facilitate their intercommunications, and 
thus add to their capabilities of mischief. Unhappily, however, this 
is no longer a subject of mere speculation. The scenes which have 
recently passed around us contain a melancholy & impressive lesson 
upon the subject, to which the most careless and supine among us 
cannot be unattentive. The caution which these scenes suggest is 
of peculiar importance to us. From the number of our free negroes, 
and from the idle & vicious habits of most of them, we have stronger 
reason than exists in most of our counties, to suspect dangerous 
intrigues with our slaves ; nor can we be insensible to the great aid 
which our slaves would derive from that source, in any actual at- 
tempts against us. 

They therefore appealed to the legislature for permission to 
borrow $15,000.00, to be repaid by the citizens of the county 
levying upon themselves a tax equal to the existing State 
tax. They further resolved : " That our representatives be 
instructed to vote for every measure, whether of a general 
or local character, which may have for its object the re- 
moval of the free people of colour from the State at large 
or any part thereof." And the motive is clearly set forth 
in the concluding portion of the petition : " The evil of 
which we complain is found to be no longer endurable, with- 
out the most serious dangers to the peace & security of our 
county, & we are willing to rid ourselves of it at every sac- 
rifice & every hazard." 28 

In December of the same year, a member of the Virginia 
Legislature wrote to the Colonization Society asking whether 
a very large number of immigrants, such as Virginia might 
desire to send at once to the Liberian colony, could be re- 
ceived on short notice. He said : 

The subject of colonising the free people of colour in this common- 
wealth, and such of the slaves as their proprietors may voluntarily 
emancipate, (if indeed it be not made to comprise a scheme of gen- 
eral emancipation,) will be acted upon by the Virginia Legislature 
during it's present session. As a member of that body feeling the 
liveliest interest in that part of the African race who have resi- 
dence among us, as well as in the general welfare of our country, 
upon which they are admitted to be a lamentable burden, it would 
be highly culpable in me to remain inactive, during the agitation of 
the subject. 

The horrible affair of Southampton has given rise to new and 
decided feelings in the breasts of Virginians from every part of 
the State, in regard to the black population. And the friends of 

88 Legislative Petitions, MS., Dec. 6, 1831, Virginia State Library. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 2"J 

Colonization, (I had almost said, of emancipation) may now find 
willing and anxious agents, to push to the utmost practicable extent 
their philanthropic wishes. 

The following January He wrote : 

The committee to which was referred the subject of the free 
people of colour was organized on Monday last, and have proceeded 
to discuss some of the delicate questions relating to it. Upon one 
point there is no difference of opinion; I mean as to the expediency 
of adopting a scheme at once for the removal of the free people of 
colour, and such of the other class as their proprietors may volun- 
tarily manumit. Thus far the people are prepared to go, as shewn 
in their accumulated memorials from every portion of the State. 
Many are for going much farther, and comprehending the whole 
black class in a system of gradual reduction. . . . The Legislature 
are certainly ready to make the most ample appropriation, efficiently 
to carry through the first named object. Different sums are men- 
tioned, from 100,000 to 300,000 dollars annually. . . , 29 

Opinion in the border slave States at this time undoubt- 
edly was: (1) the abolition of slavery, if practicable, con- 
sistently with the safety of the whites and the welfare of 
the blacks, was desirable; (2) any scheme of immediate and 
unconditional emancipation was wholly impracticable; (3) 
the tendency among newly emancipated negroes was to in- 
cite the slaves to revolt ; (4) emancipated negroes, as a class, 
had not been benefited, but, on the contrary, had been actu- 
ally the losers by the fact of emancipation. The opinion 
was widespread in the whole South that if the time ever 
came when two races, as distinct as the white and the black, 
occupied the same territory, and were numerically not 
greatly unequal, a war of extermination was almost inevita- 
ble. It has been seen that DeTocqueville held distinctly to 
this view and, although he was altogether an opponent of 
the principle of slavery, the only suggestions he had to offer 
to the South were amalgamation with the blacks, and a 
continuance of the system of slavery as long as possible. 
To look for amalgamation was to look for the mountains 
to remove themselves ; and yet, up to a period as late as 
1840, the leaders of thought, except in the Southeastern 
States, were far from willing to admit that the other was 
the only alternative. 

89 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., C. S. Carter, 
Dec. 22, 1831 ; Jan. 6, 1832. 



28 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Not long after the organization of the Colonization So- 
ciety, Dr. William Thornton expressed the conviction that 
there " never could exist a sincere union between the whites 
and the blacks, even on admitting the latter to the rights of 
freemen." 30 In 1827, Clay asked : 

What is the true nature of the evil of the existence of a portion 
of the African race in our population ? It is not that there are some, 
but that there are so many among us of a different caste, of a dif- 
ferent physical, if not moral, constitution, who never could amalga- 
mate with the great body of our population. . . . Any project, there- 
fore, by which, in a material degree, the dangerous element in the 
general mass, can be diminished or rendered stationary, deserves 
deliberate consideration. 31 

Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, in 1829, asked a similar 
question : 

What is to be done with our rapidly increasing coloured popula- 
tion ? Any one who can think, and compute numbers, and who will 
look at our censuses of population, must be convinced that the reply 
to this inquiry should call forth all the wisdom, foresight, patriotism, 
and benevolence of our whole country. A refuge must be prepared 
for these people. 32 

W. M.Atkinson, one of the most prominent Colonizationists 
in the State of Virginia, said: 

On one point we differ toto caelo — I have no doubt that emanci- 
pation without emigration, would utterly ruin the State. I further 
believe that it would end in the extermination of the one race or 
the other — and if so, I do not doubt it would be the African. Hence 
I must oppose it, everywhere, and by all gentlemanly and Christian 
means. Hence, too, one reason of my zeal for colonization, as indis- 
pensable to that other indispensable measure [emancipation]. 

I succeeded today in obtaining a decree for the emancipation of 
Elder's slaves, but his cause will go to the court of appeals. 33 

In 1830, the Senate of Massachusetts, in a resolution 
highly commendatory of the Colonization project, stated : 
" In those States where slavery is tolerated, as well as in 
the others, where it has ceased to exist, the dangers and 
difficulties, emanating from the great and increasing num- 
bers of free persons of colour, had long been the subjects of 

30 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 87-88. 

31 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 334-345- 

32 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Wainwright to 
Gurley, Jan. 5, 1829. 

33 Ibid., Atkinson to Gurley, Nov. 10, 1831. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 29 

deep individual solicitude and inquiry, and of numerous 
legislative enactments." 34 In 1839 Clay declared: 

In the slave States the alternative is, that the white man must 
govern the black, or the black govern the white. In several of these 
States the number of slaves is greater than that of the white popu- 
lation. An immediate abolition of slavery in them, as these ultra- 
abolitionists propose would be followed by a desperate struggle for 
immediate ascendancy of the black race over the white race, or 
rather it would be followed by instantaneous collisions between the 
two races, which would break out into a civil war that would end 
in the extermination or subjugation of the one race or the other. 35 

This alarm at the rapid increase of the free negro popu- 
lation was an important cause of enactments of slavehold- 
ing States prohibiting emancipations. Within a fortnight 
of the organization of the Colonization Society, a memorial 
was presented to Congress, by its Board of Managers, in 
which this rapid increase was remarked on in the following 
words : " The evil has become so apparent, and the necessity 
for a remedy so palpable, that some of the most consider- 
able of the slaveholding States, have been induced to impose 
restraints upon the practice of emancipation, by annexing 
conditions, which have no effect but to transfer the evil 
from one State to another." 36 In reply to memorials from 
Colonizationists, the Legislature of Virginia stated: 

The extent of this evil [the increase in the number of free negroes] 
may be fairly estimated, by a reference to our Statute book. The 
laws intended either to prevent or to limit it's effects, are of a char- 
acter, which nothing, but the extreme necessity of the case, could 
ever justify, to a community of republicans; and the obligation to 
resort to them, is sufficient to command the serious attention of 
every enlightened patriot. 

To considerations such as these, may be traced the policy first 
resorted to by the Legislature of Virginia in 1805, of arresting the 
progress of emancipation, by requiring the speedy removal from the 
State, of all to whom its privileges might be extended. 37 

In an address before the New Hampshire Colonization 
Society, Daniel Dana said : 

It is a fact, given us on the most unquestionable authority, that 
there are now in the Southern States of our Union, hundreds, and 

34 African Repository, vol. vi, pp. 144-147. 
35 Ibid., vol. xv, pp. 50-64. 

86 > Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings, American Colonization 
Society, MS., pp. 13-19. 
37 African Repository, vol. v, pp. 50-55. 



30 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

even thousands of proprietors, who would gladly give liberty to their 
slaves, but are deterred by the apprehension of doing injury to their 
country, and perhaps to the slaves themselves. It is a fact that in 
the States of Maryland and Virginia alone, there were fifteen years 
since, 63,000 free people of colour. It is likewise a fact, that within 
a few years past, more than 500 slaves have been emancipated, in 
the State of Virginia, by only three proprietors. Indeed, so preva- 
lent has been the disposition of Southern proprietors, for many 
years, to give liberty to their slaves, that this condition of things has 
excited a serious alarm. The legislatures of several States have 
interposed their authority, and prohibited the emancipation of slaves, 
except on the condition of their being transferred to some other 
State. 38 

The House of Representatives of Maryland, in 1831, 
passed the following resolutions : 

That as philanthropists and lovers of freedom, we deplore the 
existence of slavery amongst us, and would use our utmost exertions 
to ameliorate its condition, yet we consider the unrestricted power 
of manumission as fraught with ultimate evils of a more dangerous 
tendency than the circumstance of slavery alone, and that any act, 
having for its object the mitigation of these joint evils, not incon- 
sistent with other paramount considerations, would be worthy the 
attention and deliberation of the representatives of a free, liberal- 
minded and enlightened people. 

Resolved, That we consider the colonization of free people of 
colour in Africa as the commencement of a system, by which, if 
judicious encouragement be afforded, these evils may be measurably 
diminished. 39 

It is a significant fact, however, that these individual and 
legislative objections to the right of emancipation were con- 
fined to cases in which the emancipated remained within the 
limits of the State. In explanation of this fact, students of 
slavery have urged that the real reasons behind such objec- 
tions was either the desire of pro-slavery men to " boost " 
the price of slaves by reducing to a minimum the competi- 
tion of free-negro labor, or the fear, among the slave- 
holders, that an increasing free negro element was danger- 
ous to the security of their slave property. Undoubtedly 
both of these explanations contain an element of truth ; but 
there is abundant evidence to show that the leading single 
cause of this widespread attitude was the deliberate and firm 
conviction that the free negro was a source, and a most 

88 Ibid., vol. i, p. 144. 

89 Ibid., vol. vii, p. 30. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 3 1 

fruitful source, of lawlessness and crime, of social and 
political insecurity. The degrading influence of, and the 
degraded condition of, the free negro were recognized and 
remarked upon from every quarter of the Union. It was 
not a sectional opinion ; it was a national one. Of this im- 
portant free negro problem DeTocqueville writes: 

Whoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived 
that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer 
slaves, they have in nowise drawn nearer to the whites. On the 
contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the 
States which have abolished slavery than in those where it still 
exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where 
servitude never has been known. The electoral franchise has been 
conferred upon the negroes in almost all the States in which slavery 
has been abolished; but if they come forward to vote, their lives 
are in danger. . . . The gates of Heaven are not closed against these 
unhappy beings ; but their inferiority is continued to the very con- 
fines of the other world; when the negro is defunct, his bones are 
cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in the 
equality of death. 

In the South, where slavery still exists, the negroes are kept less 
carefully apart; they sometimes share the labour and the exertions 
of the whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain 
extent, and although the legislation treats them more harshly the 
habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate. . . . 
Thus it is, in the United States, that the prejudice which repels the 
negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, 
and inequality is sanctioned by the manners while it is effaced from 
the laws of the country. 40 

Memorialists from the Richmond and Manchester Aux- 
iliary Colonization Society, about 1825, called attention to 
the fact that of 37,000 free negroes in Virginia, not two 
hundred were proprietors of land. 41 About the same time 
the New York Tract Magazine stated : 

Free blacks are collected in large towns and cities, where a great 
portion of them are found in the abodes of poverty and vice, and 
become the tenants of poor houses and prisons. As a proof . . . 
the following striking fact has been mentioned. The State of Penn- 
sylvania, before the last census, had a population of upwards of 
800,000; the number of free blacks was about 26,000, and yet one 
half of the convicts in the State prison were free blacks. 42 

The Charlottesville, Virginia, Central Gazette declared: 
" that slavery is unjust by the laws of nature, is a truth 

40 DeTocqueville, vol. i, p. 383 ff. 

41 African Repository, vol. i, p. 67. 

42 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 91-92. 



32 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

which every man derives directly from the infallible oracles 
of his own conscientious convictions," and at the same time 
it declared that the emancipation of the slaves, without their 
removal from the State, "would be pernicious." 43 In 1827, 
a citizen of Chillicothe wrote: "In most of the towns of 
Ohio, there are a number of free blacks, who with few ex- 
ceptions, are little less than a nuisance and their numbers 
are every year increasing by immigration, as well as other 
causes. All of the whites would willingly do something to 
free themselves from this evil. 44 

Gerrit Smith, who had thought of establishing a school 
for free negroes, "so that they might take knowledge and 
Christianity to the natives of Africa," announced, in 1827 : 

I am recently getting off this scheme. The turn that negro-learning 
takes in this country is not always favorable. It is certainly not so 
with the editors of the Freedom's Journal, a paper I was at first dis- 
posed to patronize and which I still take. . . . My heart is fully set 
on discharging the patriotic duty of contributing to relieve our coun- 
try of its black population. 45 

A Virginia clergyman, writing to the Colonization Society 
in 1829, states: 

Having formerly set free a number of coloured people who are 
now vagabonds, I have done them no profit, but injured society. 
For this there is no remedy, as I have no control over them. Those 
still in my possession, I cannot conscientiously emancipate, unless 
they shall be removed by the Society to Liberia. A list of six, which 
I wish transferred to the Colony, was last fall furnished to the 
Society, and entered upon its books. I wish them to be called for, 
as I am old, and desire the business may be completed before I 
quit my earthly station. 46 

In 1829 the President of Union College stated: 

Our manumitted bondmen have remained already to the third and 
fourth, as they will to the thousandth generation — a distinct, a de- 
graded, and a wretched race. When therefore the fetters, whether 
gradually or suddenly, shall be stricken off, and stricken off they 
will be, from those accumulating millions yet to be born in bond- 
age, it is evident that this land, unless some outlet be provided, will 
be flooded with a population as useless as it will be wretched ; a 

43 Ibid., vol. i, p. 215 ff. 

44 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Wm. Graham 
to Gurley, Feb. 10, 1827. 

45 Ibid., G. Smith to Gurley, Oct. 10, 1827. 

46 African Repository, vol. v, pp. 177-178. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 33 

population which, with every increase, will detract from our strength, 
and only add to our numbers, our pauperism and our crimes. 
Whether bond or free, their presence will be forever a calamity. 
Why, then, in the name of God, should we hesitate to encourage 
their departure? 47 

Arthur Tappan, soon to be a disciple of William Lloyd 
Garrison, had, himself, experienced a problem whose solu- 
tion evidently gave him concern; although, had he been a 
Southerner, he would doubtless have quietly added another 
item to his account for incidental expenses. Slave traders 
had brought to America and sold two brothers, the sons of 
Prince Abduhl Rahhahman, a native African prince. These 
had secured their freedom and were, at the time Tappan 
wrote, in New York, being cared for by Tappan himself. 

I feel it to be incumbent on me to advise with the managers ot 
your Society before sending the children of Prince Abduhl Rah- 
hahman to Norfolk [to be transported to Africa], respecting the 
single son. Without any motive that we discover, having a suffi- 
ciency of food, etc., he has been guilty of stealing some poultry and 
has been liberated from prison, ... by his brother's borrowing and 
paying a sum of money. I can regard this as no less than an indi- 
cation of a thievish propensity that will be likely to show itself 
whenever a good opportunity offers. 48 

Of this class of persons, Henry Clay said: "They are 
not slaves, yet they are not free. — The laws, it is true, pro- 
claim them free ; but prejudices, more powerful than laws, 
deny them the privileges of freemen. . . . They crowd our 
large cities . . . where those who addict themselves to vice 
can best practice and conceal their crimes." He also called 
attention to the adoption, by the city of Cincinnati, of meas- 
ures to expel all " who could not give guaranties of their 
good behavior." 49 President Duer, of Columbia, said of 
the free blacks : 

Their numbers are constantly increasing in a formidable ratio. 
At the South they are looked upon with suspicion, and almost with 
abhorrence. At the North they are regarded as an inferior caste, 
and consequently deprived of every incentive to virtuous action. . . . 
Conscious that they can never surmount these barriers, they natu- 

47 Ibid., vol. v, pp. 277-278. 

48 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Tappan to Gur- 
ley, Sept. 11, 1830. 

49 African Repository, March, 1830, pp. 1-25. 



34 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

rally become improvident — and from improvidence the descent is 
easy to recklessness, profligacy, and crime. To the fidelity of this 
inference our criminal calendar bears melancholy witness. Com- 
paring the relative proportions of white and colored population in 
our State, more than nine-tenths of those who are arraigned at our 
police establishments and courts of sessions, and who occupy the 
cells of our bridewells, penitentiaries, and State prisons, are, we 
are constrained to say, of the latter description. 50 

Reverend William Meade, later Bishop of Virginia, the 
first agent of the Colonization Society and a man who, 
though by no means wealthy, gave hundreds of dollars to 
the cause, and who hated the system of slavery as sincerely 
as did any son of New England, and said of it that it is 
" one of the most deadly evils that ever afflicted a nation," 
wrote, in 1832 : 

I have thought, read, conversed, written, and spoken much on this 
subject for the last fifteen years. I have travelled through all the 
length and breadth of our land, and witnessed the condition of the 
negroes, bond and free; conversed fully with them, their owners, 
and their philanthropic friends ; and every year only rivets the con- 
viction more deeply in my mind, that to do them real good they 
must be separated from those of a different color. 51 

C. F. Mercer, for a committee of the House of Representa- 
tives, at Washington, replied to memorials from the friends 
of Colonization, presented in 1827. He called attention to 
the fact that one of the important results of the large num- 
ber and the degraded condition of the free blacks in the 
South, was to impose further restraints upon the practice 
of emancipation. 52 

Reverend William Henry Foote wrote of the free colored 
population of Hampshire County, Virginia, now West Vir- 
ginia : " They are here a miserable race. ... I have a num- 
ber of colored members in my church (about 30) and only 
two are free, and they are old. The slaves are better in 
every respect. And in sending to Africa I should from 
this region prefer for the good of the Colony a manumitted 

50 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Duer to Gur- 
ley, Dec. 10, 1831. 

"African Repository, vol. viii, pp. 86-87; Letters of American 
Colonization Society, MS., Meade to Samuel Wilkeson, Dec. 14, 1839. 

52 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. no. 283, pp. 408-414. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 35 

black to one of these already free or born free." 53 In 1836, 
Citizens of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, petitioning Con- 
gress in behalf of Colonization, spoke in no uncertain tones 
of the unworthiness and degradation of the free negro 
population. 54 Judge Samuel Wilkeson, of New York, later 
general agent for the Colonization Society, wrote to Lewis 
Sheridan, a free negro of respectability, a very successful 
farmer of North Carolina, and himself the owner of nine- 
teen slaves : 

The high character which you have acquired in North Carolina, 
for moral worth and mercantile ability, might be regarded as evi- 
dence that the colored man stands on ground equally elevated as 
the white man, making allowance only for the difference of educa- 
tion, and political condition. . . . Feeling a great desire for the eleva- 
tion of the colored man, I embraced every opportunity by several 
visits to the Southern and Southwestern States of making myself 
acquainted with the condition of both slaves and free people of 
colour, and their susceptibility of elevation in this country. ... I 
am satisfied that the coloured man is as capable of acquiring trades 
as the white man, and that the reason he is so seldom found in the 
Middle and Eastern States carrying on mechanic business, is not for 
want of ability to acquire the knowledge and skill, but on account of 
the difficulties and discouragements incident to his condition. . . . 
The merchant will not employ them as clerks ; the mechanic will not 
employ them as journeymen; should he perchance find such employ- 
ment, he applies for board and is refused — other workmen will not 
eat with him ; thus he meets at the very outset in life with difficulties 
which he cannot surmount. 

Wilkeson proposed that he should be one of ten men to 
organize a ship line between the United States and Liberia 
to be turned over to free negroes in order to give them en- 
couragement in their mercantile ambitions. 55 

A free negro from South Carolina had been induced to 
go to the North. Writing to friends in his native city, he 
requested the names of the members of the State Legisla- 
ture, in order that he might urge them to repeal the law 
forbidding free blacks to come into the State, for he desired 
to return. He says: 

Although I have visited almost every city and town, from Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, to Portland, Maine, I can find no such home 

53 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Foote to Gur- 
ley, Sept. 19, 1833. 

54 African Repository, vol. xii, pp. 82-85. 
65 Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 58-60. 



2,6 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

and no such respectable body of colored people, as I left in my 
native city Charleston. The law in my adopted city, Philadelphia, 
when applied to colored people, in opposition to white people, is not 
as good as in Charleston, unless the former has respectable white 
witness to sustain it. . . . All the advantage that I see by living in 
Philadelphia is, that if my family is sick, I can send for a doctor 
at any time of the night without a ticket. 56 

And the following extract from Marville H. Smith's let- 
ter seems to bear out the assertion of De Tocqueville, that 
the free negro was nowhere so badly treated as in those 
parts of the Union in which slavery never existed. Smith 
was a free negro who acted as the spokesman for a group 
of eighteen, who had gone to Illinois. 

We are ready to start from Shawneetown at any moment, and 
wish the time to come as soon as possible [the time to go to Li- 
beria] ; for though we are free in name we are not free in fact'. We 
are in as bad, or worse condition than the slaves of which you 
speak, being compelled to leave the State, or give security, and 
those of the whites who would befriend us are debarred by the fear 
of public opinion. If only those who deserve such treatment, if 
any do, were the only ones to suffer we should be content; but on 
the contrary, if one misbehaves, all the colored people in the neigh- 
borhood are the sufferers, and that frequently by unlawful means ; 
dragged from our beds at the hour of midnight, stripped naked, in 
presence of our children and wives, by a set of men alike lost to 
mercy, decency and Christianity, and flogged till they are satisfied, 
before we know for what; and when we are informed, it is prob- 
ably the first time we heard of the offence. Such is our situation 
and such the condition from which your Society can extricate us. 
We deem it worse than slavery. We say again we wish to go to 
Liberia, and if no way else is provided, we had as lief soon indent 
ourselves to the Society for life for our passage, so we can live 
among our own color. Let me know as soon as possible, whether 
you can help us, and how soon, and how much. 57 

Roger M. Sherman, of Connecticut, said of the emanci- 
pated slave : " He is liable to be taken and sold again into 
slavery, unless removed from the State. Remove him to a 
free State, and he is cut off from the hopes of any political 
standing and condemned, by the unalterable usages of 
society, to a state of degradation." 58 Edward Everett de- 
scribed their condition as one of " disability, discourage- 



56 Ibid., vol. xv, pp. 178-180. 

57 Ibid., vol. xviii, p. 221. 

68 Ibid., vol. xx, pp. 294-296. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 37 

ment, and hardship." 59 Reverend John Orcutt, of Connec- 
ticut, a traveling agent of the Society, reported : 

Not only are free negroes forbidden to come into Indiana by ex- 
press statute, but it is made a penal offense for a white person to 
induce such immigration. . . . When a State constitution was adopted 
in Oregon, four-fifths of the electors said by their vote we wiU not 
have slavery! and they also said by about the same majority, ' we 
will have no free negroes 1 " Illinois too, has a similar prohibitory 
law against free negroes. . . . Already in the Eastern States, the ^ 
black man finds himself on equal footing with the whites nowhere, 
except in the State prisons, where he is on the same level, and fully 
represented 1 No wonder that some of the free colored people at 
the North should begin to inquire with solicitude what they shall 
do. I saw several at the West who said, "We must go some- 
where 1 " 60 

Up to 1830 the opinion prevailed throughout the United 
States, unless, indeed, we except Georgia and South Caro- 
lina, that, both for the sake of the free and unhampered 
development of his possibilities, and for the purpose of 
stimulating more frequent emancipations, the free negro 
must be sent to a home without the limits of any one of the 
States. 61 And scores of slaveholders after 1817 offered 
liberty to their slaves on the condition of their willingness 
to emigrate to Liberia. John A. Dix, speaking before the 
New York State Colonization Society, in 1830, said : " The 
mass of crime committed by Africans is greater, in propor- 
tion to numbers, in the non-slaveholding than in the slave- 
holding States; and as a rule the degree of comfort enjoyed 
by them is inferior. This is not an argument in favor of 
slavery; but it is an unanswerable argument in favor of 
rendering emancipation and colonization co-extensive with 
each other." 62 

59 Address at Annual Meeting, American Colonization Society, 
Jan. 18, 1853. 

60 Minutes of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Jan. 16, 1861. 

61 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 1 20-1 21 ; vol. i, pp. 127-128; African 
Repository, vol. i, p. 89, reprint from the Albany Argus; vol. i, 
p. 182 ff., reprint from Niles Register; vol. i, p. 285; vol. v, p. 4, 
speech of Clay before the Kentucky Colonization Society, Dec. 17, 
1829; vol. v, pp. 50-S5; vol. vi, pp. 144-147; vol. xiii, p. 38; vol. xxi, 
pp. 145-149; 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. No. 283, passim. 

62 African Repository, vol. vi, pp. 163-169. 



38 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

One or two quotations, from many that could be given, 
will illustrate the point of view from which a large class of 
Southern slaveholders looked at the problem of emancipa- 
tion. Reverend C. J. Gibson wrote from Petersburg, 
Virginia : 

I have belonging to me two families of servants, whom I am 
anxious to emancipate, if, by any means, I can settle them in Liberia. 
The duties of the Holy Ministry, . . ., render me utterly unfit' to be 
a faithful Christian Master and incline me to desire this step for 
the benefit of my own highest interests and those of my sacred 
office. At the same time, I feel bound to consult the best good of 
my servants, and in releasing them from my care, to place them in 
a situation, where the blessings of freedom may really be enjoyed. 
This, I am very sure, cannot be found in our own country, and I am 
therefore determined not to free them unless they can be sent to 
Africa. 63 

It will not be without interest or profit to read the fol- 
lowing letter from an unlearned Southern slaveholder: 

Dear Sir at the Death of my Father I inherited a Negro boy by 
Name (Moses) from his Est. and by Misfortunes and the Impru- 
dence of my Youth I had to sell him Some year or two after which 
Time. I sought and found the Lord precious to my Immortal Soul 
Soon after this Happy Change the Grace of God began to Shed 
Light upon my mind I read the Holy Laws of God and found therein 
this Command do to Others as you would Others Should do to you 
I then began to Ask My Self if I had of been Moses' Slave and he 
my Master if I would have had him to of Sold me to a man who 
would have kept me in Slavery all my days on Earth and Perhaps 
without' the Comforts of Life and in Perfect Ignorance and degra- 
dation. I readily answered the Question and determined by the 
Help of God to buy Moses if ever I Got able if he would agree to 
go to the Colony Settled on the Shores of Africa I was at that 
Time Very Poor as to this World's Goods I however went' to work 
and after some Years Toil I found I had the means to Buy Moses 
I saw him and Talked with him about going to Africa and he de- 
clined I then Told him I would leave him to consider on the Subject 
and when ever he got his Consent to go I would buy him but that 
I would buy him on No Other Terms as I did not wish to own any 
Slaves Some Year or two pass'd by when Early one Morning Moses 
made his appearance at my door and Told he wanted me to buy 
him I ask'd him if he had Consented to go to the Colony he said 
if I would buy him he would go but he had rather Stay with me 
I told him I would only buy him on the Conditions he would go to 
the Colony (and then bought him he was then Quite a Prayerless 
Wicked Man I thought it would be best for him that I would keep 
him a year or two and try by the assistance of the Lord to be In- 
strumental in his Salvation in 12 or 18 Months after he Profess'd 

63 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gibson to Gur- 
ley, Jan. 26, 1844. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 39 

the Religion of the Savior Since which Time say 12 or 18 Months 
he has to all Human Appearance been a Very Pious Man and I do 
hope and think he is now traveling that Road that Leads to the fair 
Climes of Immortal Joys. I have been Striving in my poor way to 
do my duty to this poor Coloured Man the Time has Arrived when 
I think I ought to send him on to the Colony and although he is a 
poor Colour'd Man I feel distress at Parting with him but a sense 
of my duty urges me and I now wish to get Some Instruction and 
assistance from You by what Vessel I can send him and from what 
place and at What Time will it start and for what Settlement I 
want him Carried to a Healthy Settlement what Implements is nec- 
essary and what Kind of Clotheing and how Shall I get him to the 
place where the Vessel is to Sail from and to whom Shall I direct 
him to be put in the Care of and what Shall I do with the Money I 
give him to Carry with him Your kind Instruction in this Matter 
will Very Much Oblige yours with Much esteem 

Samuel O. Moon. 64 

A Kentucky slaveholder, whose slaves had been left be- 
hind, when a vessel sailed with emigrants to Liberia wrote 
to the Colonization Society: "I cannot be a slaveholder. I 
must get rid of my slaves in some way. To set them free 
in Kentucky I cannot and will not. I fear I shall have to 
adopt the revolting expedient of selling; I dread this but I 
must do something." 65 W. M. Atkinson, of Virginia, be- 
lieved that, because of the necessity of preserving the safety 
of the whites, Virginia would never give up slavery unless 
provision should be made for the removal of the blacks. 66 
A similar opinion was expressed by General Bayly, of the 
same State. 67 

The idea of the colonization of the negro sprang full 
grown from the brain of no individual. Henry Clay thought 
that it was the product, not of the minds of men, but of the 
very requirements of the times, because it was " an obvious 
remedy." As early as 1773 a correspondence was begun 
between Doctor Samuel Hopkins, of Rhode Island, and 
Reverend Ezra Stiles, later President of Yale College. 
Hopkins desired to send two or three negroes of Rhode 
Island to the coast of Guinea. Stiles thought that not 
fewer than thirty or forty could be profitably sent. The 

64 Ibid., Moon to Gurley, August 17, 1835. 
66 Ibid., Triplett to W. McLain, Jan. 16, 1846. 

66 Ibid., Atkinson to Gurley, Sept. 27, 1831. 

67 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 1 19-120. 



40 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

purpose of these men, however, was purely missionary; 
they did not discuss the desirability of transporting the free 
colored population back to their native land, although it is 
evident that Doctor Stiles thought one effect of such a set- 
tlement on the coast of Africa might be to have some influ- 
ence in putting an end to the African slave trade. 68 The 
Revolutionary War cut short all hopes of carrying out these 
plans. In 1777 a committee of the Virginia Legislature, of 
which Jefferson was chairman, proposed the gradual eman- 
cipation of slaves, and, at the same time, their exportation. 69 
There can be no doubt that between 1785 and 181 7, Doc- 
tor William Thornton exerted a powerful influence in favor 
of colonization. He was in correspondence with British 
leaders in the movement for the transportation of their 
blacks, and which, under the direction of Granville Sharpe 
and others, resulted in the establishment of the British 
colony of Sierra Leone on the West coast of Africa. In 
an undated letter " To the Black Inhabitants of Pennsyl- 
vania, assembled at one of their stated meetings in Phila- 
delphia," he wrote : 

It is in contemplation by the English to make a free settlement of 
Blacks on the Coast of Africa, which they have already begun. . . . 
They are desirous of knowing if any of the Blacks of this country 
be willing to return to that Region which their fathers originally 
possessed, and finding many in Boston, Providence and Rhode Island 
very anxious of embarking for Africa, wish also to be informed if 
any of the Blacks in Pennsylvania are inclined to settle there. 70 

Indeed, soon after the preliminary meeting which resulted 
in the organization of the American Colonization Society, 
Thornton wrote to Henry Clay that, during the winter of 
1786-87, while traveling in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, 
he found many free blacks and became deeply interested in 
them. He had already corresponded with friends, members 
of the Sierra Leone Society, and he became anxious to 
know whether the free blacks of' those two States desired 



68 Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, vol. i, pp. 363-364. 

69 African Colonization, "An Inquiry into the Origin, Plan, ar#i 
Prospects of the American Colonization Society," p. 4. 

70 Thornton Papers, MS., vol. xiv. Pages not numbered. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 4 1 

to be transported to the British Colony. He had a meeting 
called, at which hundreds of that class were present, and 
he was later informed by them that 2,000 of them would go. 
The Massachusetts Legislature seemed interested, and many 
members promised liberal aid, until they heard that he pro- 
posed to settle the emigrants under British protection. 
They desired the settlement to be made " in the most south- 
ern part of the back country between the whites and In- 
dians." To this scheme Thornton objected. 71 Thornton 
assures us, however, that about the year 1788, "the Ameri- 
cans in New England were desirous of sending all the free 
blacks from that country, and offered ships and every neces- 
sary for their support." 72 Thornton himself at one time 
had made many preparations to go to Africa to superintend 
such a colony; but his plan did not materialize. 73 Doctor 
Hopkins, whose letter to Stiles is quoted above, was, in 
1789, in correspondence with Thornton on the subject of 
colonization ; and in 1791 he made an effort to secure the 
incorporation of the Connecticut Emancipation Society, one 
of whose objects was the colonization of free blacks. 74 

In December, 1800, the Virginia Legislature requested 
Governor Monroe to correspond with the President of the 
United States " on the subject of purchasing lands without 
the limits of this State," whither obnoxious persons might 
be sent. This resolution was called forth by a conspiracy 
of slaves in or near Richmond. By law the conspirators 
were guilty of a capital offence; but the Legislature pro- 
posed transportation, as an act of clemency. This corre- 
spondence was productive of no material results. But the 
following year the Legislature directed the Governor to 
continue the correspondence, suggesting this time that it 
might be desirable to locate a colony outside the limits of 
the United States, a view in which President Jefferson fully 

71 Ibid., vol. xiv, letter to Clay, no date. 

72 Ibid., vol. xiv, no name, no date. 

78 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Mrs. Anna M. 
Thornton, Jan. 18, 1831. 

74 Half-Century Memorial, American Colonization Society, 1867, 
pp. 62-65. 



42 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

concurred. The essential difference between these two Vir- 
ginia resolutions was that the first contemplated merely the 
establishment of a penal colony, while the second proposed 
to provide an outlet for the whole of the free black popula- 
tion, and to provide for those who desired to emancipate 
their slaves an opportunity to do so without danger to the 
State. President Jefferson corresponded, though without 
success, with the British authorities regarding the incor- 
poration of the free blacks of this country into the Sierra 
Leone colony. 75 

Samuel J. Mills of Connecticut, deservedly called the 
father of the foreign missionary enterprise in the United 
States, came to the conclusion, after a tour of the South- 
western part of the United States, that " we must save the 
negroes, or the negroes will ruin us." He thought the 
South at that time so well disposed towards the negro as to 
be willing to enter heartily into a colonization scheme. 76 

Paul Cuffee, a negro sea captain, a resident of Massachu- 
setts, and the son of a native African who had been sold 
into slavery but who had later secured his own freedom, 
transported from the United States to Africa thirty-eight 
persons of color, probably the first company of negro emi- 
grants whose object was resettlement in the land from which 
they or their fathers had come. The expense of the voyage, 
nearly $4000, was borne by Cuffee himself and the negroes 
were taken for settlement to the Sierra Leone colony. From 
the point of view of actual accomplishment the name of 
Paul Cuffee must find a place on the list of those whose 
efforts and whose views made possible the organization of 
the American Colonization Society, although his company 
set sail in 181 5, almost two years before the formal organi- 
zation of the American Colonization Society, and the voyage 
was undertaken upon Cuffee's personal responsibility and 

75 Mathew Carey, Reflections, p. 6; Half-Century Memorial, 
American Colonization Society, 1867, pp. 62-65. 

76 Half-Century Memorial, American Colonization Society, 1867, 
pp. 66-68. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 43 

without cooperation or help from either the government or 
any philanthropic association. 77 

Reverend Robert Finley of New Jersey has generally 
been considered the father of the American Colonization 
Society. If by this it is meant that he, more than any other 
man, brought about the meeting which resulted in the or- 
ganization of that Society, no violence is done to truth; 
although it could with equal justice and probably more accu- 
racy be said that the Society was the result of the efforts 
of Thornton, Mills, and Finley, north of Mason and Dixon's 
line, and of Charles Fenton Mercer, Francis Scott Key, and 
E. B. Caldwell, south of that line. 

At least as early as February, 1815, Finley had become 
deeply interested in the organization of a colonization move- 
ment. He talked of colonization, wrote of colonization, 
made a visit to Washington in the interest of colonization, 
and led in the movement which resulted in a public meeting 
at Princeton in furtherance of the plan. But while he had 
been at work in New Jersey, Mercer had not been idle in 
Virginia. Each, it seems, worked at this time independently 
of the other. Mercer had been elected a member of the 
Virginia Legislature. He had learned of the two resolu- 
tions passed by that body on the subject of colonization, in 
1800 and 1802 — both passed under a pledge of secrecy. 
Mercer was not under this pledge, and he published abroad 
the action taken at that time. A new interest was aroused. 
He secured the passage of a resolution which met, in most 
respects, the views of Doctor Finley. This resolution was 
passed in the Senate with but one dissenting vote, and in 
the House by a vote of 132 to 14. 78 The governor was 
thereby instructed to correspond with the President of the 
United States for the purpose of obtaining territory upon 
the coast of Africa, or upon the shore of the North Pacific, 
or at some other place, "to serve as an asylum for such 

77 J. W. Lugenbcel, Sketch of the History of Liberia, MS. 

78 Half-Century Memorial, American Colonization Society, 1867, 
pp. 68-71; Carey, Reflections, p. 6; African Colonization, "An In- 
quiry into the Origin, Plan, and Prospects of the American Coloni- 
zation Society," pp. 4-5. 



44 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

persons of colour as are now free, and may desire the same, 
and for those who may hereafter be emancipated within this 
commonwealth." 79 While Finley and Mercer worked in 
New Jersey and Virginia, Key was at work in Maryland, 
and Doctor E. B. Caldwell, a brother-in-law of Finley, was 
busy in the District of Columbia ; and when it was pro- 
posed to hold a meeting in Washington, December 21, 1816, 
the leaders were thoroughly interested and, to a degree at 
least, the public mind had been prepared. 

And now by way of summary. In 181 5 New England 
recognized the evil of slavery to be a national evil. New 
England felt the responsibility of helping, not driving, the 
South to get rid of that institution. Cooperation, not an- 
tagonism, was to be the means employed by each section in 
its relations with the other. To the upper South slavery 
was a problem, because it had grown to be one of those 
underlying bases in the economic life of the South ; because 
its immediate abolition would mean, in many cases, a sud- 
den change from affluence to poverty; because it was sin- 
cerely believed that the sudden emancipation of many thou- 
sands of slaves in the South would be an added cruelty to 
the class of improvident free negroes; because of the very 
fact that the liberation of one slave meant the addition of 
one free negro. For the free negro was also a problem. 
He was a problem because of the instances in the mind of 
every tolerably read Southerner, of outrages and insurrec- 
tions of the blacks against the whites, in countries in which 
the population of each was not greatly unequal ; because of 
the opinion that prevailed in every part of the Union that 
the negro could never rise to the limit of his possibilities so 
long as he remained in this country ; because in his degraded 
condition he was a source of danger, only and always, to 
the community in which he lived. These were the prob- 
lems, and together they made up the great negro problem 
of that time. There were four solutions proposed: (1) the 
immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery; (2) the 
perpetuation of slavery as long as possible; (3) the policy 

79 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 249-251. 



THE FREE NEGRO AND THE SLAVE 45 

of non-interference with the natural course of events ; (4) 
colonization. 

The first of these proposed solutions was supposed to be, 
and was, utterly impracticable, the paramount importance 
of the preservation of the Union from a dissolution, either 
actual or seriously attempted, being at once taken for 
granted. For it is utterly impossible to reconcile with the 
statements of either the leaders or the leading opponents of 
Garrisonian Abolition the statement of Professor A. B. 
Hart that "it must not be supposed that . . . even the 
[anti-slavery] agitators realized that slavery had the latent 
power of dividing the Union and bringing about civil war." 
Time and again they were warned of just this latent power ; 
and the Garrisonians expressed their satisfaction with the 
result, should that result be even the dissolution of the 
Union. 

The second proposed solution was as impracticable as the 
first. The institution of slavery was doomed to die. The 
question of prime importance was, not whether or not 
slavery could continue to exist as a system, but what form 
its destruction should take. The Garrisonians and the cot- 
ton gin had not yet filled the upper South with a lingering 
wish that it might survive, and a lingering hope that it 
would. In 181 5, the leaders of thought in the upper South 
were definitely set against the second proposed solution. 

The third was so seldom advocated by men of pronounced 
influence, that a consideration of its merits is unnecessary, 
in this study. 

Unquestionably, the one supposed solution to which the 
leaders of thought in every part of the Union, except possi- 
bly the extreme South, turned was that of colonization. 
The free negro would be transported to the land whence 
his fathers came ; the danger from the alarming increase in 
the free negro population would vanish as ghosts vanish 
with the coming of the morning; slaveholders could then 
safely and gradually emancipate their slaves, and the negro 
problem would be solved. And now let us consider the 
channel through which the experiment was made. 



CHAPTER II 

Organization, Purpose, and Early Years of the 
American Colonization Society 

As a result of the efforts of the brothers-in-law, Rev. 
Robert Finley of New Jersey, and Dr. E. B. Caldwell of 
Washington, a meeting was held in that city December 16, 
1816. The general purpose was the discussion of negro 
colonization. Bushrod Washington presided, and among 
the speakers were Henry Clay and John Randolph of Roa- 
noke. Five days later a second meeting was held, presided 
over by Clay. Among resolutions adopted, the following 
is of interest : 

The situation of the free people of colour in the United States 
has been the subject of anxious solicitude, with many of our most 
distinguished citizens, from the first existence of our country as an 
independent nation ; but the great difficulty and embarrassment at- 
tending the establishment of an infant nation when first struggling 
into existence, and the subsequent great convulsions of Europe have 
hitherto prevented any great' national effort to provide a remedy for 
the evils existing or apprehended. The present period seems pecu- 
liarly auspicious to invite attention to this important subject, and 
gives a well grounded hope of success. The nations of Europe are 
hushed into peace; unexampled efforts are making in various parts 
of the world to diffuse knowledge, civilization, and the influence of 
the Christian religion. . . . Desirous of aiding in the great cause of 
philanthropy, and of promoting the prosperity and happiness of our 
country, it is recommended by this meeting, to form an association 
or Society for the purpose of giving aid and assisting in the coloni- 
zation of the free people of colour in the United States. 1 

E. B. Caldwell, John Randolph, Richard Rush, Gen. Wal- 
ter Jones, Francis Scott Key, Robert Wright, James H. 
Blake, and John Peter were appointed to present a memo- 
rial to Congress, requesting federal aid in procuring terri- 
tory in Africa or elsewhere for the carrying out of their 
design; Key, Washington, Caldwell, James Breckenridge, 

1 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Colonization 
Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 1-3. 

46 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 47 

Gen. Walter Jones, Rush, and W. G. D. Worthington were 
appointed to prepare a constitution and rules. 

At a third meeting, December 28, there was adopted a 
constitution, in which the sole object of the organization 
was stated to be "to promote and execute a plan for coloniz- 
ing (with their consent) the Free People of Colour resid- 
ing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Con- 
gress shall deem most expedient. And the society shall act 
to effect this object, in cooperation with the General Gov- 
ernment, and such of the States as may adopt regulations 
upon the subject." 2 A president, eight vice-presidents, a 
secretary, a treasurer, and a recorder were to be chosen. A 
board of managers, composed of these officers and twelve 
other members of the Society, was to constitute the central 
organization. Societies organized in the United States, 
working with the same object as that of the parent Society, 
and contributing to the funds of the central treasury, were 
to be considered auxiliary to it. 

A great deal has been written regarding the ulterior mo- 
tives of those who in its early days controlled the Society. 
Yet, even during the bitter decade from 1830 to 1840, The 
Liberator admitted many a time the sincerity of motive and 
the nobility of design of those whose active interest brought 
the Colonization Society into being. The quarrel was not 
brought about, it was said, because the movement had been 
dug up out of the miry clay; it was rather because it had 
cast itself down from the height on which it was born. It 
will, therefore, be safe to assume that those leaders who 
have left behind them a record of the motives of both them- 
selves and their coadjutors, have spoken from their hearts. 

No more credible witnesses could be found to represent 
respectively, the northern and southern portions of the Mid- 
dle Atlantic States than Robert Finley, of New Jersey, and 
William H. Fitzhugh, of Virginia. Finley, whose State 
was not burdened with the problem of slavery, looked at 
the Society from the point of view of the welfare of the 

2 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 4-9. 



48 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

free negro. Fitzhugh, a splendid example of the influential 
Virginia slaveholder, the owner of three hundred slaves 
who were by his will emancipated and offered special in- 
ducements if they would consent to go to Liberia, heartily 
and sincerely opposed human slavery, and yet, with others, 
saw that an epidemic of smallpox could not be relieved by 
abusive letters to the victims by a member of the health 
board. The South, to him and to others, was rather an- 
other Prometheus Bound, waiting for a deliverer. He saw 
that the abolition of slavery, if it was to come peaceably, 
must come gradually; that unconditional and immediate 
abolition would be accompanied by a national upheaval and 
a radical readjustment. Of Finley's motive, he himself 
wrote in 1815: 

The longer I live to see the wretchedness of men, the more I ad- 
mire the virtue of those who devise, and with patience labor to 
execute, plans for the relief of the wretched. On this subject, the 
state of the free blacks has very much occupied my mind. Their 
number increases greatly, and their wretchedness too, as appears to 
me. Everything connected with their condition, including their 
color, is against them; nor is there much prospect that their state 
can ever be greatly ameliorated, while they continue among us. 
Could not the rich and benevolent devise means to form a Colony 
on some part of the Coast of Africa, similar to the one at Sierra 
Leone, which might gradually induce many free blacks to go and 
settle, devising for them the means of getting there, and of protec- 
tion and support till they were established. 3 

Fitzhugh wrote in 1826: 

Our design was, by providing an asylum on the coast of Africa, 
and furnishing the necessary facilities for removal to the people of 
colour, to induce the voluntary emigration of that portion of them 
already free, and to throw open to individuals and the States a wider 
door for voluntary and legal emancipation. The operation, we were 
aware, must be — and, for the interest's of our country, ought to be 
gradual. But we entertained a hope, founded on our knowledge of 
the interests as well as the feelings of the South, that this operation, 
properly conducted, would, in the end, remove from our country 
every vestige of domestic slavery, without a single violation of indi- 
vidual wishes or individual rights. 4 

Reverend William Meade, later bishop of Virginia, who 
was the first agent of the Society, and to whom slavery was 

3 North American Review, vol. xxxv, p. 119. 
* African Repository, vol. ii, pp. 254-256. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 49 

an "accursed evil," said in 1825 that, in addition to the pur- 
pose of the leaders in the colonization movement, as stated 
in the constitution, the Society- 
hopes to show to the pious and benevolent how and where they 
may accomplish a wish near and dear to many hearts, which is now 
impossible ; it hopes to point out to our several legislatures, and even 
to the august council of this great nation, a way by which, with 
safety and advantage, they may henceforth encourage and facilitate 
that system of emancipation which they have almost forbidden. 5 

As early as 1819 such formidable opposition had reared 
its head, from extremists of both the pro-slavery and the 
anti-slavery parties, that the managers of the Society offi- 
cially denied that their design was either " to rivet the chains 
of servitude " upon the negroes at the South, or " to invade 
the rights of private property, secured by the constitution 
and laws of the several slave-holding States." 6 Indeed, it 
is a significant fact, and worthy of note at this point, that 
during the whole period from 1820 to the issuance, by Abra- 
ham Lincoln, of the Proclamation of Emancipation, the 
bitterest opponents Colonization had were those strange 
bedfellows — New England and South Carolina. If the 
opposition from New England was more pronounced than 
that of the Carolinians it was largely because of the fact 
that the former was better organized. It is very probable 
that never, in any section, did Colonization have so few 
friends as in South Carolina and Georgia. Again and 
again the Society was called upon to repeat its original 
denial, and always with as little effect. 

The reason is obvious. Colonization was essentially a 
moderate, a middle-State movement, counting among its 
supporters the moderate men of every part of the Union. 
The idea that called it forth was a middle-State idea. Ex- 
tremists of the far North and the far South were unable to 
enter into its feelings. As is likely to be the case in all 
compromise movements, extremists on either side magnified 
possible objections into actually base designs. The whole 

6 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 147-150. 

8 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Colonization 

Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 65-74. 

4 



50 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

history of Colonization contains conclusive evidence that 
those leaders who actually directed the affairs of the organi- 
zation, where they deviated at all from the design of the 
Society, as expressed in its constitution, deviated consis- 
tently on the side of emancipation. If those who hesitate 
to admit the purity of their designs would go to the trouble 
of investigating the evidence that remains, they would prob- 
ably accept the defense of the Board of Managers in 1823, 
that " they have persevered, confident that their motives will 
one day be duly appreciated, and trusting their cause to the 
ruler of the world." 7 

Sentiments of friends and leaders, and reasons given by 
individuals for favoring the Colonization scheme, cover a 
wide range — from that of Gerrit Smith, who said, while yet 
a member of the Colonization Society, " We are all aboli- 
tionists at the north," 8 to that of a friend from Canton, 
Ohio : " Among the multitude carried away by the floods of 
abolitionism, I remain an unwavering friend of the Coloni- 
zation mode, of abolishing slavery in the United States," 9 
and to that of the Albany Argus : 

It seems to be the middle ground, upon which the several interests 
throughout the country, in relation to slavery, can meet and act 
together. It appears, indeed, to be the only feasible mode by which 
we can remove that stigma, as well as danger from among us. . . . 
Gradual emancipation . . ., under the advantages of a free govern- 
ment, formed, in their native land, by their own hands ... is the 
only rational scheme of relieving them from the bondage of their 
present condition. 10 

But those who desire to consult a proslavery collection of 
letters could not profitably spend their time among the rec- 
ords of the American Colonization Society, where, of many 
thousands of letters, probably not a dozen, written prior to 
1846, attempted a defence of the principle of slavery. 

The organization of the Society was completed January 
1, 18 1 7, when Judge Bushrod Washington was elected 

7 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 190-200. 

8 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., G. Smith to 
Walter Lourie, Albany, N. Y., Dec. 31, 1834. 

9 Ibid., Geo. Sheldon to Gurley, Canton, Ohio, Aug. 2, 1836. 

10 African Repository, vol. i, p. 89. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 5 I 

President, the following being elected Vice-Presidents: 
William H. Crawford of Georgia ; Henry Clay of Kentucky ; 
William Phillips of Massachusetts ; Col. Henry Rutgers of 
New York; John E. Howard, Samuel Smith, and John C. 
Herbert, all of Maryland ; John Taylor of Caroline, in Vir- 
ginia ; Gen. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee ; Robert Ralston 
of Pennsylvania, and Richard Rush, of the same State; 
General John Mason of the District of Columbia, and Rev. 
Robert Finley of New Jersey. The foregoing, with E. B. 
Caldwell, Secretary, W. G. D. Worthington, Recorder, 
David English, Treasurer, and Francis Scott Key, Gen. 
Walter Jones, John Laird, Rev. James Laurie, Rev. Stephen 
B. Balch, Rev. Obadiah B. Brown, James H. Blake, John 
Peter, Edmund J. Lee, William Thornton, Jacob Hoffman 
and Henry Carroll constituted the Board of Managers. 
On the list of first contributors to the efforts of the Society 
appear the signatures, among others, of Henry Clay, John 
Randolph of Roanoke, William Thornton, Daniel Webster, 
William Dudly Diggs, Samuel J. Mills, Richard Bland Lee, 
John Taylor of Caroline and Bushrod Washington. 11 

Within a fortnight of the organization of the Society, a 
memorial was presented to both Houses of Congress, calling 
attention to the condition and prospects of the free colored 
population, calling attention also to the fact that, in order to 
safeguard themselves against what might prove dire conse- 
quences, important slaveholding States had adopted meas- 
ures to restrict the further growth of the evil, by the enact- 
ment of laws prohibiting emancipations within the State. 
The memorialists consider the right of emancipating slaves 
" a right which benevolent or conscientious proprietors had 
long enjoyed under all the sanctions of positive law, and of 
ancient usage," and suggest as a more satisfactory solution 
of the problem, that adequate provision be made for the 
establishment of such a colony as the Society later estab- 
lished. The subject of the colonization of Africa was pre- 
sented in its varied aspects : as a movement for ridding the 

11 Original List of Subscribers, MS. 



52 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

United States of a separate caste or class, dangerous to the 
peace and safety of the country ; as an important factor in 
the elevation of the free negro, who, it was believed, could 
never rise to his possibilities in the United States; as an 
instrument for the spread of civilization in Africa, and as 
promising much as a missionary enterprise. Pickering, for 
the House Committee on the Slave Trade, reported favor- 
ably, urging that the free negro, when colonized, should be 
sent where he would never provoke friction with the whites. 
Africa was considered the most desirable place for the reali- 
zation of this object. The committee expressed its belief 
that the civilized powers should engage and assent to " the 
perfect neutrality of the colony." It was believed that 
arrangements might be made, whereby the colony might be 
incorporated with that at Sierra Leone. A resolution, not 
acted on at that session of Congress, was recommended, 
directing that the United States open negotiations with other 
powers for the abolition of the slave trade, and with Great 
Britain for the reception into Sierra Leone of " such of the 
free people of color of the United States as, with their own 
consent, shall be carried thither." In case no such arrange- 
ment could be made, it was recommended that the United 
States should seek to obtain from Great Britain and the 
other maritime powers a guarantee of " permanent neutral- 
ity for the formation of such a colony." 12 

In October, a committee was appointed to interview 
President Monroe who, during the whole term of his presi- 
dency, actively cooperated with the Society. 13 In Novem- 
ber, Rev. Samuel J. Mills and Ebenezer Burgess were 
appointed the Society's first agents to Africa. They were 
directed to go by way of England and secure there such 
information as they could, that would be helpful in the se- 
lection of territory favorable for the proposed colony. 

i 2 27th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Rept., no. 283, pp. 208-213. J. P. Ken- 
nedy's Report. This is a most valuable document on colonization 
and the slave trade. By some, it was considered the most important 
House Report of the session. 

13 Journal of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., October, 1817. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 53 

From there, they were to proceed to the West Coast of 
Africa for the purpose of exploration and of ascertaining 
the best situation for the establishment of such a colony as 
the Society contemplated. They were to observe the cli- 
mate, soil, etc., of such parts of the coast as they visited, 
"as it is in contemplation to turn the attention of the new 
colonists mostly to agriculture." 14 On the return voyage 
Mills died. 

At the annual meeting, January i, 1818, President Wash- 
ington reported a growing interest in every part of the 
Union in favor of the Society ; also a respectable subscrip- 
tion from a " small but opulent society of slave-holders in 
Virginia." Further, it was stated : 

Should it [the Society] lead as we may fairly hope it will, to the 
slow but gradual abolition of slavery, it will wipe from our political 
institutions the only blot which stains them; and in palliation of 
which, we shall not be at liberty to plead the excuse of moral neces- 
sity, until we have honestly exerted all the means which we possess 
for its extinction. 15 

During this first year, also, auxiliary societies had been 
formed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Virginia, 
and Ohio. 16 

Already, by 1819, one happy result of the Society's efforts 
was seen in an act passed by the State of Georgia. It was 
an act providing for the disposal of slaves illegally imported 
into the State. Such slaves, if captured, were to be consid- 
ered the property of the State and were to be sold at auc- 
tion, provided that, in case the Colonization Society agreed 
to transport such negroes to such foreign colony as the So- 
ciety might have established, the negroes, after payment by 
the Society of all expenses incurred by the State in connec- 
tion with them, were to be transferred to the Society. 17 
This was the beginning of a crusade against the African 
slave-trade, and from this time until that trade had ceased, 

14 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Nov. 5, 1817. 

15 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Colonization 
Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 20-23. 

18 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 23-30. 
17 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 65-74. 



54 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the Society's existence would have been amply justified if 
it had accomplished nothing beyond its influence against that 
inhuman traffic. It is believed that Charles Fenton Mercer, 
" the Wilberf orce of America," was inspired by his interest 
in African colonization to wage, in Congress, a warfare 
against the African slave trade such as was waged by no 
other American. The Anti-Slave-Trade Act of 1819 was 
the outcome of a memorial from the Board of Managers of 
the Colonization Society. 18 In the annual report of the 
Board of Managers, 1819, the efforts of the managers are 
stated to be directed to "the happiness of the free people of 
colour and the reduction of the number of slaves in 
America." 10 

In January, 1819, a letter from the Colonization Society 
was presented in the House of Representatives. The ef- 
forts of the Society in sending out Mills and Burgess were 
noted, and it was stated that, although the Society owed its 
origin to philanthropic individuals, its purposes could not 
be satisfactorily realized and its success could not be com- 
plete unless it had the support of the Federal government. 20 
Probably the greatest single disappointment the Society 
ever experienced was in the continued refusal of the Fed- 
eral government to appropriate funds for the carrying out 
of the chief purpose of the Society; the transportation and 
settlement of free persons of color on the west coast of 
Africa. Year after year memorials were presented; year 
after year favorable reports were read from House com- 
mittees to which the memorials were referred; and year 
after year Congress refused to make an appropriation. 
There can be no doubt that when the Society was formed, it 
looked to the Federal government for aid in its under- 
taking. 21 

This disposition to leave the Society to work out its own 
program and collect, as best it could, the funds that were 

18 Ibid., vol. i, p. 88. 

19 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 65-74. 

20 27th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Rept. no. 283, pp. 223-225. 

21 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS. See Original Constitution. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 55 

necessary, was not shared by President Monroe. When the 
Anti-Slave-Trade Act of 1819 was passed, he construed it 
liberally and, in cooperation with the managers of the Colo- 
nization Society, sent out Agents of the United States to 
select on the west African coast a territory on which recap- 
tured Africans might be landed and cared for by the gov- 
ernment. 22 The first material result of this cooperation 
was the chartering, in 1820, of the Elizabeth by the govern- 
ment, and her departure from New York with Rev. Samuel 
Bacon and John P. Bankson, government agents, Samuel C. 
Crozer, agent for the Colonization Society, and eighty-odd 
free negroes. Going by way of Sierra Leone, the company 
landed on Sherbro Island where, by the first of June, the 
three agents and twenty-four of the settlers had died. 23 

So much has been said of the unhealthfulness of the 
territory to which the Society's first negroes were sent, 
that it will be fitting here to record the facts as they were 
presented by the colonial agents. As years added to the 
experience of those who directed the settlement, it was 
observed that the cases of African fever through which 
most of the immigrants passed were less frequent and 
less violent among those who arrived during the dry than 
among those who arrived during the rainy season. But this 
lesson had to be learned and, although the Abolitionists of 
the Garrisonian school and their apologists have depicted in 
glowing terms the wretchedness of the free negro, "expa- 
triated" and sent off, out of the way, to die of African 
fever, it is yet true that if the number of deaths among the 
Liberian colonists be compared with the number of deaths 
among the settlers of either Virginia or Plymouth, the com- 
parison is highly favorable to the Liberians and the Coloni- 
zation Society, and this notwithstanding the fact that the 
African colonists as a class were imprudent in observing 
even the essentials of personal hygiene. 24 They insisted on 
eating, when they should have abstained from food. They 

22 27th Cong., 3d Sess., H. Rept. no. 283, p. 2. 

23 Lugenbeel. 

24 African Repository, vol. xv, p. 306. 



56 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

exposed themselves needlessly and carelessly and, in spite 
of the most earnest efforts on the part of the Society and 
its physicians in the colony, the death-rate figures were 
eagerly used to stir up opposition among the New Eng- 
enders. 

In 1832 the Board of Managers went carefully into a con- 
sideration of the actual number of deaths, the causes of 
death, and the possibility of decreasing materially the death- 
rate. A committee appointed for that purpose reported 
that since 1820, twenty-two expeditions had gone out from 
the United States to Liberia. On the first eighteen of these, 
1487 emigrants had been transported. Of these, two hun- 
dred and thirty had died from diseases of acclimation, from 
fever and diseases consequent upon it. The conclusion 
reached was that the three most fruitful causes of death 
were, in descending order : ( 1 ) the transportation to Africa 
of persons who had become accustomed to the high or 
mountainous country in the United States, (2) the settle- 
ment of immigrants too close to the coast and in the heart 
of the malarial district, (3) the arrival of immigrants at the 
wrong time of the year. While, of those persons who left 
the high, and non-malarial sections of the United States, 
one out of every two and one-fourth died ; of those who left 
the malarial sections of the United States, only one out of 
every twenty-seven died. Of those landed at Monrovia, a 
settlement in the malarial section, one out of every five died ; 
while, of those landed at Caldwell, further from the coast 
and having a greater elevation, one in every fourteen died. 
Of those transported to Liberia during the rainy season, one 
out of every four and one-third died ; while, of those trans- 
ported during the dry season, only one out of every six and 
two-thirds died. 25 

Thereafter, the Society used every reasonable precaution 
within its power to prevent sickness, to care for those who 
were sick, and to cut down the death-rate — and with success. 

25 Minutes Board of Managers of American Colonization Society, 
MS., May 7, 1832, vol. ii, p. 273 ff. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS $J 

But there can be no doubt that the climate was much more 
severe in its effects upon the health of the white man than 
upon that of the black. Indeed, every white agent who 
went out, from the first expedition until the independence 
of the Republic of Liberia was declared, took his life in his 
hands and knew very well that the odds were greatly against 
not only his health, but his life. Mills, Bacon, Crozer, 
Bankson, Andrews, Winns and his wife, Randall, Anderson, 
Skinner and his wife, Ashmun and his wife, Buchanan — 
heroes and heroines these — and Ashmun and Buchanan 
the greatest of them. Men and women who, like these, lay 
down their lives voluntarily upon the altar of service, are 
not to be charged with selfishness or the desire to perpetuate 
a system against which they spoke and labored eloquently. 

The sending of expeditions and the sustenance of emi- 
grants required funds. How were the finances to be pro- 
vided and the enthusiasm spread? The President had gone 
as far as he could, in keeping with the law of 1819, in coop- 
eration with the Society. By that law, his efforts were 
confined to the suppression of the slave-trade. No direct 
appropriation could be secured from Congress. The result 
was that for many years, indeed, during the whole period 
covered in this study, the important sources of revenue 
were: (1) a national system of agencies, (2) receipts from 
auxiliary societies, (3) bequests and legacies, (4) State 
appropriations, (5) collections taken by ministers in churches 
on the Fourth of July each year. 

As early as March, 1819, the Managers appointed thir- 
teen agents whose duty it was to collect funds and arouse 
interest throughout the Union. Among these were General 
Walter Jones, C. F. Mercer, William H. Fitzhugh, and 
Francis Scott Key. But the first important general agent 
of the Society was Rev. William Meade. The origin of the 
agency is interesting. William H. Crawford, who was pre- 
siding at a meeting of the Managers, in April, 1819, called 
attention to an advertisement he had found in a Georgia 
newspaper. Thirty or forty negroes had been illegally im- 



58 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

ported into the State. The law of the State required that 
they should be sold at auction, unless, by a provision already 
referred to, they could be taken over by the Colonization 
Society, and transported to Africa. Meade was at once 
sent to Georgia to make an effort to save the negroes from 
slavery. 

In May, Meade reported that the Governor had agreed 
to postpone the sale and " afforded me an opportunity of 
seeking among the humane and generous of this southern 
country, the means of their redemption." 26 In June he re- 
ported that arrangements had been made, by which the 
negroes were to be turned over to the Society. " Some who 
had but little hope of our general enterprize declared their 
willingness to contribute for the ransome of these; and a 
few who intended to have become the purchasers at this 
sale, expressed a pleasure at the thought of their restora- 
tion to Africa, and proved their sincerity by uniting with 
the Society at Milledgeville." Under the direction of the 
most prominent citizens of the State, he had formed three 
auxiliary societies. At Augusta and Savannah he found 
similar good feeling toward the Society. Of the negroes 
at Charleston he says : " their attendance in the church 
where I was invited to officiate, (and it was the same, I was 
told, in all the others,) was truly grateful to the soul of the 
Christian. The aisles and other places in the church set 
apart for them, were filled with young and old, decently 
dressed and many of them having their prayer books, and 
joining in all the responses of the church. I must also beg 
leave to add a general remark concerning the whole South- 
ern country, in which I am justified by the repeated assur- 
ances of the most pious and benevolent that the condition 
of the negroes is greatly ameliorated in every respect. As 
to food, raiment, houses, labour, and correction, there is 
yearly less and less over which religion and humanity must 
lament." At Georgetown he saw " eight or ten of the most 

"Minutes Board of Managers of American Colonization Society, 
MS., April 7, 1819; May 4, 1819. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 59 

wealthy and influential, and obtained assurances of their 
cordial co-operation." At Fayetteville "all the citizens 
prepared for co-operation. I had only to go to their houses 
and take down their names." 

At Raleigh he found " the same unanimity of sentiment. 
The supreme court being in session, many of the judges and 
lawyers were collected from the different parts of the State, 
who cordially joined in the Society, and testified to the gen- 
eral prevalence of good will to it throughout the State. At 
a meeting for forming a constitution, the highest talents, 
authorities, and wealth of the State were present, and unani- 
mously sanctioned the measure." From Raleigh, he went 
to Chapel Hill, the seat of the State University. It was 
commencement time, and ministers, trustees, and other per- 
sons of influence were assembled. " I was happy to find 
the same feeling here, and that a small society had already 
been formed." For his agency as a whole, he reported six 
organized, and ten or twelve prospective, societies. He had 
secured, in about two months time, subscriptions amounting 
to between seven and eight thousand dollars. He reported 
that his success in raising funds would have been greater, 
but for the fact that " the pecuniary distress is, by universal 
consent, greater than ever was known. ... I was told a 
hundred times that no other cause but this would elicit any- 
thing." Of the general feeling in regard to the Society, he 
reported "a conviction that unless a great alteration takes 
place ; or I have been misinformed, it will meet with a lib- 
eral support." 27 During the early years of the Society, Rev. 
William Meade also undertook a local agency in his own 
county in the Valley of Virginia. He secured subscriptions 
amounting to almost seven thousand dollars there, his own 
near relatives contributing, with himself, seventeen hun- 
dred dollars. 28 

In 1825 William H. Fitzhugh, of Virginia, was appointed 
to go through the Middle Atlantic and New England States 

27 Ibid., Report of Meade, June 21, 1819. 
"African Repository, vol. i, pp. 146-147. 



60 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

in the interests of the Society. Theodore Frelinghuysen, 
of New Jersey, received an appointment in 1828, as did 
also Rev. Leonard Bacon, of Connecticut. 29 In 1830, the 
Managers resolved to appoint a permanent agent for the 
New England States, " who by correspondence, the estab- 
lishment of auxiliary societies, and an attendance upon the 
Legislatures of those States shall awaken a more general 
and active interest in the object and augment the funds of 
the Society." Whenever desirable agents could be obtained 
general agencies were created for the lower Middle States, 
the upper Middle States, the New England States, the 
Western States, the Southern States, and the Southwestern 
States. During the years 1838 to 1845 these agencies were 
by far the most important source of revenue that the So- 
ciety had. 

Thousands of dollars were annually turned over to the 
funds of the parent Society by the various State and county 
societies. The organization toward which the Society 
worked, in its earlier years, was, (1) the parent organiza- 
tion, (2) a State auxiliary society in every State of the 
Union, (3) societies auxiliary to the State societies, in every 
county of every State. There was a time when the number 
of auxiliary societies was about one hundred and fifty. 30 

Of these, special mention should be made of the Vermont 
Society, over which the venerable Elijah Paine presided for 
many years ; the Massachusetts Society, among whose fore- 
most members were Joseph Tracy and Simon Greenleaf ; 
the Connecticut Society, with Leonard Bacon, Roger M. 
Sherman and Governor Tomlinson; 31 the New York So- 
ciety, which for years was favored with the services of Dr. 
Alexander Proudfit and President Duer of Columbia, and 
which received liberal support from Benjamin F. Butler 
and, until about 1835, from the philanthropist, Gerrit 

29 Board of Managers of American Colonization Society, MS., 
Sept. s, 1828. 

30 For lists of the auxiliary societies see appendices to the annual 
reports of the American Colonization Society. 

31 African Repository, vol. v, p. 93. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 6 1 

Smith ; the New Jersey Society, with Judge Halsey a lead- 
ing spirit ; the Young Men's Society of Philadelphia, which 
at times was almost completely under the dominance of 
that quaint, queer, irrepressible Quaker, Elliot Cresson, who 
whether at home, or in England, .or in Mississippi, or in 
Vermont, never failed to impress his hearers with his un- 
tiring energy, and oftentimes with his utter disagreement 
with Garrison as to the method of ridding the land of 
slavery, although he was as anxious as Garrison to get rid 
of the whole system; the Maryland Society, that counted 
among its leaders Key, C. C. Harper, John E. Howard, and 
J. H. B. Latrobe ; the Virginia Society, whose President in 
1833 was John Marshall, and among whose twelve Vice- 
Presidents were John Tyler, James Madison, James Pleas- 
ants, Hugh Nelson, William H. Broadnax, William Max- 
well, and Abel P. Upshur; 32 the Loudoun County (Vir- 
ginia) Society, one of whose Presidents was James Monroe; 
the Petersburg (Virginia) Society, in which John Early, 
later a bishop in the Southern Methodist Church, was for 
years a most active member; also the Societies of Ken- 
tucky, Ohio, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the last two of 
which, for some years, exerted an influence that brought 
about the liberation of hundreds of slaves, that established 
a separate settlement at Sinoe in the Liberian country, and 
counted among their members and leaders, John Ker, John 
McDonogh, William Winans, and Zebulun Butler. In 
1824 there were only twenty auxiliary societies ; two years 
later there were forty-six. From this time the number grew 
rapidly. 33 By 1838, it seems, auxiliary societies had been 
organized in every State and Territory in the Union, except 
Rhode Island, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Michigan. 34 

Another source of revenue was the subscription of large 
sums by philanthropists throughout the Union. Mercer 
was one of the earliest contributors of this class. About 
182 1 he pledged himself to be responsible for the collection 

82 Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 24-25. 

83 Ibid., vol. i, p. 347. 

34 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 100. 



62 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

of $5000, with which to begin the active operations of the 
Society, he to be personally liable for that amount if he 
failed to secure it by solicitation. 35 Gerrit Smith, later Abo- 
litionist, proposed, in 1828, that friends of the Society con- 
tribute $100 per year for ten years. The plan became well 
known as the Gerrit Smith plan. Of $54,000 contributed 
on this plan, the New England States gave $9000, New York, 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware $14,000, Maryland 
and the District of Columbia, $4000 ; the South $26,000, and 
the Northwest $iooo. 36 One of the contributors on this 
plan was Gerrit Smith ; another, Mathew Carey, also Theo- 
dore Frelinghuysen, John McDonogh of New Orleans, John 
H. Cocke of Virginia, and Courtlandt Van Rensaelaer of 
New York. J. H. McClure, of Kentucky, gave $1000 per 
year for ten years. George Hargraves of Georgia, and 
John Marshall of Virginia gave $500 each. 37 Gerrit Smith 
contributed, besides his contribution on the Gerrit Smith 
plan, $5000, when the Society reached a period of extreme 
need. 38 Judge Workman of New Orleans left, by will, to 
the Society $10,000. Colonel Rutgers of New York left 
$1000. "Two Friends "in Georgia left $500 each. 39 Childers 
of Mississippi left a sum which was estimated to be about 
$30,000.*° James Madison left $2000 and also the proceeds 
from the sale of a grist mill and lot. 41 Daniel Waldo and 
his wife of Boston gave $24,000 in 1845. 42 

Soon after the Southampton Insurrection in 1831, and 
due in large measure to the alarm that was excited by it, the 
Maryland Legislature provided for an appropriation total- 



85 Fragment in Gurley's handwriting, MS., in which is copied a 
letter from C. F. Mercer. 
36 Life Members, MS. 

87 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Hargraves to 
Treasurer, Augusta, Ga., June 9, 1833 ; African Repository, vol. ix, 
P- 364. 

88 African Repository, vol. ix, p. 364. 

39 Ibid., vol. viii, p. 366. 

40 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to P. R. 
Fendall, July 16, 1836. 

41 African Repository, vol. xii, p. 237. 

42 Letters to American Colonization Society, MS., Joseph Tracy 
to McLain, Boston, Sept. 5, 1845. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 63 

ing $200,000, payable in instalments each year. Because 
of the independent action of the Maryland Society, the par- 
ent organization was deprived of this source of revenue. 43 
At about the same time, the Virginia Legislature made an 
appropriation of $90,000, though certain restrictions as to 
its application made it almost useless for the purposes of 
the Society. 4 * In 1850 the Legislature of the same State 
appropriated $30,000 per year for five years, on condition 
that the negroes for whose transportation the fund was to 
provide were free at the time of the passage of the act, were 
residents of Virginia, and had already been transported 
when application was made for the payment of the amount 
appropriated for such transportation. 45 In addition to these 
sources of revenue John McDonogh, by will, left to the So- 
ciety $25,000 annually, 46 and David Hunt of Mississippi left 
to it $45,ooo. 47 

The fifth source of revenue, and it was much more than 
a mere source of revenue, was the annual Fourth of July 
collection taken up in churches in almost every part of the 
Union. In these days, when a most important new light 
has been thrown upon the forces that have cooperated in 
the making of history; when, particularly in the study of 
that generation from 1830 to i860 — a time pregnant with 
problems and with possibilities, and with historical inter- 
pretations — the economic interpretation is monopolizing in- 
terest, it has become habitual with students of history to 
speak and write in terms of cotton production, the cotton 
gin, the expanding Southwest, and so on. There is very 
much truth in this from the point of view of the South. 
But, from the point of view of the North, that busy decade 
from 1835 to 1845 was the battleground between public 

43 African Repository, vol. viii, p. 61. 

44 Letters of American Colonization Society, F. Knight to Dr. A. 
Cummings, vol. iii, no. 738, Aug. 17, 1840. 

45 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization So- 
ciety, 1845-54, March 16, 1850, pp. 139-141. 

49 Journal of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Jan. 23, 1851, vol. iv, pp. 90-91. 
47 Ibid., vol. iv, p. 271. 



64 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

opinion, so-called, and that opinion moulded by the active 
and lay ministry, meaning by the lay ministry that body of 
educational and philanthropic men who, from lecture room 
or counting house, cooperated with the Christian ministry 
in forming a distinctly church sentiment. At the begin- 
ning of that decade the ministry was leading public senti- 
ment; at the end of it public sentiment was leading the 
ministry. This is altogether obvious from the correspond- 
ence preserved by the Society. 

From the organization of the Society in 1817 to the early 
thirties, the ministry all over New England cooperated 
splendidly with the Colonization managers, preached annual 
sermons on Colonization, on or near the Fourth of July, 
and contributed to the Washington office annually thou- 
sands of dollars. At their general conferences and asso- 
ciations they passed with great unanimity resolutions com- 
mendatory of the Society, and urged a continuance of the 
July sermons and collections. Beginning with the thirties, 
church doors in New England and in many parts of the 
West were closed to Colonization lecturers and agents, and 
the reason given, in scores of cases, was not an objection 
of the minister himself, but his fear that his membership 
would be displeased if he allowed the use of his pulpit to 
Colonizationist lecturers. From 1817 to 1830 cooperation 
and collections from the pew in the New England States 
were important contributions to the early success of the 
enterprise. 

Among the contributors to the Colonization treasury must 
be mentioned also the Society of Friends, particularly the 
Friends of North Carolina who, though comparatively poor, 
contributed very liberally to the transportation of free ne- 
groes. As early as 1820, they paid over to the Society 
eight hundred dollars. 48 In 1827 they again contributed 
the same amount. 49 Between 1825 and 1830, Masonic 

48 Journal of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., May 30, 1820. 

49 African Repository, vol. ii, p. 351 ; Journal of Board of Mana- 
gers of American Colonization Society, MS., Feb. 12, 1827. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 65 

Lodge chapters in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massa- 
chusetts, Columbus and Woodville, Mississippi, also sent in 
contributions. 50 

But to return to our narrative of the Society's operations. 
In 1820, the fifteen Vice-Presidents were equally divided 
between the States south of the border States, the border 
States, and the States north of those States, five being 
elected from Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia; five from 
Kentucky, the District of Columbia, and Maryland, and five 
from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachu- 
setts. 51 Of the funds received by the Society by the time 
the Elizabeth sailed for Africa, out of a total of $14,031.50, 
the States north of the border States had contributed 
$2664.67, the District of Columbia and Maryland had con- 
tributed $8466.58, and the States south of the border 
States had contributed $2900.25. 52 If those who already 
believed that the Society was an organization gotten up by 
slaveholders for the purpose of getting rid of the free ne- 
gro, and thereby increasing the value of the slaves that they 
desired to sell further South, had taken the trouble to think 
upon these figures, they would have seen that Virginia, the 
State, above all others, to which their views might have been 
expected to apply, was sending in contributions that were 
just about equal to those that came from the States in 
which slavery had already been abolished; and that the 
movement was a national, not a sectional one, although its 
vital energy undoubtedly did come from the middle-State 
section. 

Even before the Elizabeth sailed, the managers went care- 
fully into the question of the practicability of their scheme. 
They considered the " marrow " of the arguments against 
colonization to be whether or not the colony proposed could 
receive and subsist, or the Society transport, all the free 

50 African Repository, vol. ii, p. 353; Letters of American Coloni- 
zation Society, Apr. 21, 1827, May 21, 1827, May 24, 1827. 

51 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
zation Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 118-119. 

52 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 150-151. 



66 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

negroes from the United States. They realized that the 
colony could not receive, in any one year, more immigrants 
than could be provided for by the annual surplus products 
of the colony, including importations. They doubted whether 
the Society, unaided by the resources of the State or Fed- 
eral governments, could transport the annual increase in 
the free negro population, about 5000. But with such gov- 
ernmental aid, they were sure of the success of their under- 
taking. At any rate, they said, whether accompanied by 
complete or only partial success, the movement could not 
but have the most salutary results. As was said at the 
time: 

Although it is believed, and is, indeed, too obvious to require proof, 
that the colonization of the free people of colour, alone, would not 
only tend to civilise Africa; to abolish the slave trade; and greatly 
to advance their own happiness; but to promote that, also, of the 
other classes of society, the proprietors and their slaves, yet the 
hope of the gradual and utter abolition of slavery, in a manner con- 
sistent with the rights, interests, and happiness of society, ought 
never to be abandoned. 83 

If Ohio, with one crop only a year, could add on an aver- 
age 26,000 a year to her population, could not the west coast 
of Africa, with two crops a year and a perpetual summer, 
sustain an average immigration of 5000 from the United 
States? Indeed, ought it not to be able to sustain the 
whole of the annual increase of the negro population of the 
United States, free and slave, which amounted to 40,000? 
If only the movement would receive cordial support, be- 
tween America and Africa an interchange of useful articles 
would take the place of trade in human beings, and 

new forms of Government, modelled after those which constitute 
the pride and boast of America, will attest' the extent of their obli- 
gations to their former masters, and myriads of freemen, while they 
course the margin of the Gambia, the Senegal, the Congo, and the 
Niger, will sing, in the language which records the constitution, 
laws, and history of America, hymns of praise to the common parent 
of man. 64 

But these high hopes were disturbed, and it was a gloomy 
day among the Managers when, in October, 1820, they dis- 

88 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 106-107. 
°* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 107-115. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 6j 

cussed the prospects for colonization in the light of the dis- 
tressing news that had come of the large number of deaths 
among the emigrants carried over by the Elizabeth. If 
there was much likelihood that these conditions would con- 
tinue, they had no doubt that their efforts on the west coast 
of Africa ought to be given up without delay. But the ex- 
periment had not been made under favorable conditions. 
The vessel had landed during the unhealthful, rainy season. 
The landing and settlement had been made at a most unde- 
sirable location. Diseases had been contracted on the vessel 
during the voyage. Besides, there were many applicants 
who were not only ready but anxious to go. The decision 
was that they must continue the experiment. 55 

Nothing daunted, therefore, by reports from the first ex^ 
pedition, the United States Government chartered the Nau- 
tilus, and she sailed from Norfolk early in 1821, and to- 
wards the latter part of March, the same year, the U. S. 
Schooner Augusta sailed. In the Nautilus went about 
thirty emigrants who, with a number of those who had been 
transported in the Elizabeth, were received into Sierra 
Leone. With these two expeditions went Messrs. Andrews, 
Winn, Bacon, Wittberger, and Mrs. Winn, agents for the 
Government and the Society. By the beginning of autumn, 
Andrews and Mr. and Mrs. Winn had died. 56 

Late in 182 1 Dr. Eli Ayres, as principal agent for the So- 
ciety, arrived at Sierra Leone, and Captain R. F. Stockton 
arrived in the U. S. Schooner Alligator. December II, 
Ayres and Stockton anchored off Cape Mesurado, or Mont- 
serado, and in exchange for gunpowder, tobacco, muskets, 
iron pots, beads, looking-glasses, pipes, cotton, etc., secured 
a title deed to a valuable tract of land which was the nucleus 
of what is now the Republic of Liberia. 57 It seems that the 

55 Journal of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., October 16, 1820; Origin, Constitution and Proceedings 
of American Colonization Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 131-149. 

56 Lugenbeel ; African Repository, vol. i, pp. 3-4; Origin, Consti- 
tution, and Proceedings of American Colonization Society, MS., vol. 
i, pp. 168-194. 

B7 Lugenbeel. 



68 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

land was never ceded either to the United States Govern- 
ment or to the Colonization Society. It was ceded to Cap- 
tain Stockton and Dr. Ayres " to have and to hold the said 
premises for the use of these said [negroes] citizens of 
America." 58 The territory was a trust, and was from the 
first so considered by the Managers of the Society. From 
the first, they looked to the time when the colony they 
should plant would be able to stand alone, a model republic 
for the African to admire and, perhaps some day, imitate. 
Ayres then returned to Sierra Leone and prepared to plant 
the emigrants on the newly ceded territory. By April, 
1822, this had been done. 59 At the beginning of summer 
Dr. Ayres left Africa for America, and put one of the colo- 
nists, Elijah Johnson, in charge of the settlement. 

In August of this year, the brig Strong arrived from Bal- 
timore with immigrants, a cargo of provisions, and Jehudi 
Ashmun, a name that must ever remain first in importance 
among the early white men who went to Africa to help 
establish the Society's colony. An indiscretion on the part 
of the colonists who had settled at Montserado, arising from 
a wrong interpretation of some of the acts of the native 
tribes, and the inability of the natives to appreciate fully 
their obligation to respect the deed of cession which they 
had made over to Dr. Ayres and Captain Stockton, caused 
hard feeling between the colonists and the natives. Ash- 
mun saw at once that he must look for friction, and he lost 
no time in putting the settlement in a condition of military 
defence for the protection of the settlers who were then 
living at Montserado. Several attacks were made by the 
natives, but altogether without success. The defeated na- 
tives acquiesced in the occupation of the land they had 
ceded to the agents. 69 April 25, 1822, the American flag 
was for the first time hoisted on Cape Montserado. 

By 1823 the Managers of the Society had become again 

58 Half-Century Memorial of American Colonization Society, 1867, 
p. 83. 

59 Lugenbeel. 
6 <> Ibid. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 69 

very hopeful of the success of colonization on the West 
Coast of Africa. They reported about a hundred and 
thirty settlers at that time living at the Society's settlement, 
a regularly planned town, and great improvement in the 
health of the colonists, although Mrs. Ashmun had died 
since her arrival in Africa. They noted a rapidly growing 
desire among the free negroes of America to emigrate to 
the settlement, and 

when they reflect upon the frequency of manumissions, wherever the 
law has imposed no restrictions, when they consider the power of 
example . . ., and especially when they recollect the institutions of 
their country, and the light of the age, they are induced to expect 
that, should prosperity attend the colony, thousands now in servi- 
tude amongst us will one day be freemen in the land of their 
ancestors. 61 

Dr. Ayres, who had returned to Africa after his visit to 
the United States, was instructed to negotiate with the na- 
tive kings for a "much larger extent of country than we 
now possess on that continent." 62 An appeal went out from 
the Managers for more funds to meet the opportunities that 
were dawning upon the enterprise. They appealed for the 
means to send emigrants in sufficient numbers to render 
their presence along the coast a " security from the intrigues 
of slave traders," and to protect the settlements from the 
"cupidity of neighboring tribes." Also, "abundant infor- 
mation has been laid before the Board ... to warrant the 
declaration that numerous slave holders would send, some 
a portion, and others the whole of their slaves to the colony, 
as soon as they are convinced that the colony is prepared 
for their reception, and that their condition would be im- 
proved by the removal." 63 

In view of the often repeated charge made by the ultra- 
abolitionists that, between the African fever and the bar- 
barity of the native tribes, the Society was sacrificing the 

61 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 198-221, Sixth Annual Report of the 
Board of Managers, 1823. 

62 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., March 28, 1823. 

63 Ibid., June 4, 1823. 



70 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

American free negro for its own selfish and unworthy aims, 
it will be not without interest to call attention to a report of 
the Managers, early in 1824. Since the origin of the So- 
ciety, two hundred and twenty-five emigrants had sailed for 
the African coast. The number in the colony at the time 
of the report was one hundred and forty, a number of those 
missing having gone to Sierra Leone to live; several had 
returned to the United States, and only forty deaths had 
been reported. Of these forty, twenty-two were passengers 
on the Elizabeth. Only four deaths had resulted from con- 
flicts with the natives ; two had been drowned, one had died 
of old age, one died through his own rashness, and four 
were children under four years of age. 64 Indeed, the Mana- 
gers thought this a very hopeful beginning, and others evi- 
dently agreed with them, for the Presbyterian Synods of 
Philadelphia and Virginia had approved the efforts of the 
Society, as had also the General Convention of the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church, the first two, unanimously. And 
as for the possibility of securing emigrants, it was the opin- 
ion of the Board that " the means will never equal the de- 
mand for transportation." 65 

The Managers, who had again memorialized Congress in 
1822, urging further restrictive measures against the Afri- 
can slave trade, 66 adopted the recommendations of a com- 
mittee appointed to consider the advisability of requesting 
further aid from Congress. The committee expressed the 
opinion that " it [the scheme of colonization] is well known 
to be far too great, to be sensibly affected by any resources 
which an association of individuals can command. To the 
nation, and to the nation alone, must we look for adequate 
means of accomplishing such a work." It was recom- 
mended that Congress be asked to take under its protection 
the colony already planted, to provide appropriations for 
its development, to make further purchases of territory, to 

84 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 231-232. 

65 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 244-253. 

66 Ibid., vol. i, p. 182. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS J I 

supply it with a force adequate for its military defence, and 
to enact regulations for its temporary government. It was 
also recommended to petition Congress to incorporate the 
Society in the District of Columbia. 67 The petition that re- 
sulted went the way of all other petitions whose aim was to 
secure direct financial aid from Congress. 

At the annual meeting in February, 1824, on the motion 
of General Robert G. Harper, the territory that had been se- 
cured was named Liberia, and the settlement made was named 
after the President of the United States, Monrovia. Early 
in this year a remonstrance from the Liberian settlements 
reached the officers of the Society. Although great care 
was taken to send out to the settlement only those who were 
believed to be desirable immigrants, the government of the 
Liberians by direction of the Society soon began to present 
added problems. Dissatisfaction among the few settlers 
had reached such a point that four documents and a special 
agent were sent to Liberia before the colonial agent was 
able to restore peace and order. The settlers complained, 
first, that lots had not been distributed to immigrants in 
accordance with instructions of the Board of Managers ; 
second, that it was impracticable for settlers to obey the 
regulations requiring them to erect, each on his lot, a dwell- 
ing, within two years of his selection of the lot ; third, that, 
because of the return of Dr. Ayres to the United States, the 
Managers evidently intended to abandon the settlers in a 
strange land; fourth, that certain settlers were being dis- 
criminated against, by the government, in favor of other 
settlers; and finally, that they were dissatisfied with the 
agents. The reply of the Managers is conclusive and sets 
forth beyond doubt the fact that the complaints were 
founded upon ignorance of the facts, although it is prob- 
ably true that no adequate instructions and no definite and 
detailed scheme had ever been sent out to the agent for the 
government of the colony. Direct, and probably useful 
advice was given in the following words : 

87 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 272-276. 



72 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Let us not be misunderstood. ... It is our intention now and all 
times to distinguish between the industrious, the provident, the or- 
derly and useful citizens — and those who are lazy, disorderly, and 
hurtful to the settlement. We wish it to be explicitly understood, 
that we will not extend . . . indulgence to the lazy and the disor- 
derly. ... It' would give us great pleasure if we had the means to 
extend our supplies to those who would properly value and make 
good use of them. We have begged through the country — we have 
begged of Congress and of the State Legislatures — we are constantly 
begging and contributing ourselves. You receive all the benefit of 
it. Those who are not satisfied with this, will be satisfied with 
nothing. 68 

During the disorders in the colony, the Society's agent 
was insulted and abused, public authority was defied, and 
an armed force had taken possession of, and robbed, the 
public storehouse, and the Managers, in an address to the 
Citizens of Liberia, say : " This is the very conduct repeat- 
edly predicted by our opponents ; we have been told over 
and over again that you would not submit to any law or 
government without an armed force; we have constantly 
repelled these reproaches on your character as unjust; what 
shall we now say?" The address was characterized by 
firmness, but also by kindness ; and it was rather by an ap- 
peal to their reason than by threats of punishment that the 
Managers called upon the colonists to submit to rightful 
authority and settle their differences. 69 In their general 
instructions to the colonial agent, Mr. Ashmun, the Mana- 
gers speak of the " wicked combination and disgraceful 
proceedings of Lot Carey and others. . . ." " Such pro- 
ceedings, if repeated, must inevitably lead to the destruc- 
tion of the Colony." The mildest punishment consistent 
with the reestablishment of order was to be inflicted; the 
arms were to be taken away from those who had had a part 
in the rioting; civil officers, among the offenders, were to 
have their commissions revoked. Carey, himself a minis- 
ter, was to abstain from the further exercise of his minis- 
terial function " till time and circumstances shall have evi- 
denced the deepness and sincerity of his repentance." 70 

_ 68 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., March 20, 1824. 

69 Ibid., March 20, 1824, 

70 Ibid., vol. i, p. 201. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS J I 

In private instructions, the agent was criticised for not 
having promptly resisted the first expression of " insolent 
and abusive language " toward him ; and he was instructed : 
"... keep your arms by you, or near you. Never con- 
tinue altercation, where there are symptoms of passion. 
. . . Stop the rations of every one who refuses to labour 
in the public service according to their oaths and engage- 
ments. If this will not do they must be banished." He 
was instructed to be as "mild, calm, steady, firm," as was 
consistent with the necessities of the case. 71 

In addition to these efforts to bring peace to Monrovia, 
the Managers sent out a special agent to examine and report 
on the prospects of the colony. The man selected was Rev. 
Ralph Randolph Gurley, a graduate of Yale and a native 
of Connecticut who, in 1822, began a connection with the 
central office of the American Colonization Society, where 
he gained a reputation as editor and orator that was not 
only coextensive with the limits of the Union, but that ex- 
tended to England and Scotland. From 1822 to 1840 he 
did more than any other single man connected with the So- 
ciety — and many men thought, as much as almost any half 
dozen men — to keep open the avenues of thought and sym- 
pathy and cooperation between the biggest and best of men 
in every part of the Union. Utterly unlike in their private 
practices, what Henry Clay was in the Halls of Congress, 
Gurley was to Colonization, essentially a peacemaker and 
a lover of the Union. Those who, following Garrison and 
his partisans, charge the colonization movement with being 
a move to rivet the chains of the slaves, and base their con- 
tention upon the fact that every President of the Society, 
from its organization to near the opening of the Civil War, 
was a holder of slaves, must be ignorant of the fact that 
Gurley's influence during those years of his active leader- 
ship was so much greater, in molding the policies of the 
Society, than that of any of these presidents, that it would 
be ridiculous to compare it with the influence of any, or all, 
of them. 

71 Ibid., April 1, 1824. 



74 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Elliot Cresson, one of the most persistent Colonizationists 
in the history of the Society, used to call the second Presi- 
dent, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, "The Great Incubus." 
Those who would understand the platform of the Coloniza- 
tion movement must consult, not the list of slaveholding 
presidents who were the official heads of the organization, 
although, with the possible exception of Carroll, not a presi- 
dent of the Society has ever been a proponent of slavery, 
notwithstanding the fact that the first four of them were 
holders of negro slaves (and the two phrases are by no 
means synonymous to those who realize that slavery was a 
problem), but the secretaries and the boards of managers 
and directors, for these were the molders of policy. Dur- 
ing those years of bitter struggle, between 1830 and 1840, 
Gurley stands out as the great Colonizationist. He was the 
one man who held in the hollow of his hand the confidence 
of moderate men throughout the United States, on the sub- 
ject of slavery. He was undoubtedly a poor guardian of 
the Society's exchequer. He wrought mightily with the 
pen and played havoc with the purse. But of all the charges 
that were made against him by extremists in England and 
America, not one has resulted in his conviction at the bar 
of public opinion. When he was superseded, a nation-wide 
protest, but a protest particularly from the South, went up. 
While Garrison was actively and consciously engaged in 
pulling the Union to pieces, Gurley was traveling from 
North to South, from East to West, observing the results 
of radicalism and dreading the aftermath. An accurate 
biography of Gurley would throw a new and not favorable 
light upon the results of Garrisonism. 

This man was about to perform his first important service 
to the cause of Colonization. He met Ashmun at the Cape 
Verde Islands, whither the latter had been compelled to go, 
for rest and recuperation, and the two proceeded to Liberia. 
After ten days, Gurley left for America, leaving Ashmun 
commissions which, like his own, were from both the Gov- 
ernment and the Society. 72 When Gurley presented to the 

T2 Lugenbecl. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 75 

Managers his proposed constitution for the government of 
the colony, it was received with disappointment. " The 
Board think it much too complicated and intricate for the 
simplicity of a few settlers. . . . We wish the settlement 
founded in republican simplicity and Christian plainness — 
all unnecessary offices and dignities and official titles ought 
to be avoided." 73 But after six months' experiment, the 
instrument had proved so satisfactory that the Board with- 
drew its objection and officially approved it. 74 In his re- 
port to the Managers, Gurley expressed great satisfaction 
with the location of the settlement, the fertility of the soil, 
the health of the colonists, their general intelligence, their 
Sunday Schools. He was convinced, however, that the 
government was too feeble, and that several recent decisions 
of the Board had been received with dissatisfaction among 
the colonists. He noted the need for medicines, agricul- 
tural implements, etc. 75 

The years 1 825-1 830 were years of rapid progress and 
expansion of the colonization scheme in the United States. 
The few settlers who began to return exerted an influence 
favorable to the spread of sentiment among the blacks in 
favor of emigration, 76 though some who returned opposed 
the colony. The opportunities of the Society, during this 
whole period, far exceeded its ability to take advantage of 
them. It was unable to afford the means of transportation 
for those who applied for passage. It did a great service 
in bringing about an interchange of views between leading 
men in the South Middle States and the New England 
States by sending such men as Charles Fenton Mercer and 
J. B. Harrison to meet with the legislature and to converse 
privately with leaders in New York and the New England 

78 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Nov. 13, 1824. 

7* Ibid., May 18, 1825. 

78 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS., vol. i, p. 277 rf. 

76 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Dec. 22, 1825. 



?6 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

States. 77 Memorials were presented to legislatures of the 
several States, asking their approbation of the objects of 
the Society and their pecuniary support. 78 The Society en- 
listed important workers when it adopted the suggestion of 
J. H. B. Latrobe, that the ladies of the Union be invited to 
organize female societies " for the purpose of aiding in the 
collection of funds by procuring donations, holding fairs, 
etc., etc. — that this be put into the form of a resolution, 
prefaced by some general remarks — ' female sensibility — 
sympathy ' — etc. etc. etc. and then published as a circular." 
It also sought to make the means that it had count for most 
in the colony, by refusing to transport to Africa any free 
negro over fifty years of age, unless he was a member of a 
family that was emigrating to Liberia; and by refusing, 
except in extreme cases, to give more than six months' sub- 
sistence to colonists after their arrival at the settlement. 79 

At the annual meeting in 1827, Henry Clay made an im- 
portant speech, voicing the disappointment that was felt by 
the managers at the continued refusal of Congress to appro- 
priate funds for the cause. He was sure that the Society 
had been organized merely as a pioneer in the work, and 
conscious of its inability to carry out its program without 
the support of Federal or State governments, or both. He 
realized that assistance had been denied it largely because 
it had been compelled to stand between two violent cross- 
fires of public criticism. 

According to one (that rash class which, without a due estimate 
of the fatal consequence, would forthwith issue a decree of general, 
immediate, and indiscriminate emancipation) it was a scheme of the 
slaveholder to perpetuate slavery. The other, (that class which be- 
lieves slavery a blessing, and which trembles with aspen sensibility 
at the appearance of the most distant and ideal danger to the tenure 
by which that description of property is held,) declared it a con- 
trivance to let loose on society all the slaves of the country. . . . 

He believed that, hereafter, the population of the United 
States would duplicate itself not oftener than once in every 

77 Ibid., May 10, 1825 ; Jan. 24, 1828. 

78 Ibid., Mar. 4, 1825 ; Sept. 24, 1827. 

79 Ibid., Jan. 12, 1829; Sept. 24, 1829. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 77 

thirty-three years. If, during the next period of duplica- 
tion, he said, " the capital of the African stock could be kept 
down, or stationary, whilst that of European origin should 
be left to an unobstructed increase, the result, at the end of 
the term, would be most propitious," and at the end of two 
terms, would leave the proportion of black to white approxi- 
mately one to twenty. Now, he thought it practicable to 
transport the annual increase of the whole colored popula- 
tion, slave and free, estimated by him to be about 52,000. 
The' total expense of sending this increase to Africa, each 
year, would be $1,040,000 and 65,000 tons of shipping. Is 
that, considering the magnitude of the object, 

beyond the ability of this country? . . . If I could only be instru- 
mental in ridding of this foul blot [slavery] that revered State that 
gave me birth, or that not less beloved State which kindly adopted 
me as her own, I would not exchange the proud satisfaction whicn 
I should enjoy, for the honor of all the triumphs ever decreed to 
the most successful conqueror. 

Of the opponents of colonization he said : 

If they succeed, they must go back to the era of our liberty and in- 
dependence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous 
return. They must revive the slave trade with all its train of atroci- 
ties . . They must arrest the career of South American deliver- 
ance from thraldom. They must blow out the moral lights around 
us and extinguish that greatest torch of all which America presents 
to 'a benighted world, pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, 
and their happiness. . . . Then, and not till then, . . . can you per- 
petuate slavery, and repress all sympathies and all humane and 
benevolent efforts among freemen, in behalf of the unhappy portion 
of our race who are doomed to bondage. 

Of the future of the Society he says, " I boldly and confi- 
dently anticipate success." 80 

The managers undoubtedly felt that, if the North was 
opposed to slavery, and if it regarded the presence of the 
free blacks as a source of weakness and of danger to the 
Union, and if the slaveholder was expected to offer his 
slaves their freedom, they ought to be able to hope confi- 
dently for liberal contributions from the Middle and New 
England States. But despite a rapidly growing sentiment 
favorable to the Society, despite active cooperation between 

80 African Repository, vol. ii, pp. 334-345- 



78 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the Secretary of the Navy and the Board of Managers, and 
despite the hopeful future that seemed to be opening upon 
Liberia, contributions from New England were distinctly 
disappointing. 81 Expeditions had to be delayed or omitted 
and negroes who desired passage had to be refused, although 
the Society did not give up hope of providing necessary 
funds, until it had appealed for aid, not only through the 
ordinary channels, but through the churches, State Legisla- 
tures, and Masonic Orders. 82 In 1829 the Managers pub- 
licly announced that the need for funds was " never so ur- 
gent as at present. Large drafts have come on us from the 
Colony, and it is all-important that our funds should be 
greatly increased, and that speedily." 

If it be asked, why did not New England and why did 
not Congress grant to the Society the funds that it certainly 
needed, and without which it was unable to work most 
effectively, and the lack of which was the most important 
cause of the small number of emigrants transported to 
Liberia and a very important cause of the comparatively 
small number, not nearly so inconsiderable as is generally 
supposed, of slaves whose liberation it secured, the answer 
is not obvious. Perhaps the most satisfactory method of 
getting at the root of the matter will be to survey the prog- 
ress of public sentiment, on the subject of colonization, 
from 1820 to 1830. 

In 1818 the aims and efforts of the Society were approved 
by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church ; also 
by the Society of Friends of Greensboro, North Carolina; 
by the Synod of Virginia; and by the General Association 
of Massachusetts. 83 Again in 1823, and again in 1826, the 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church reiterated its 

81 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of Ameiican Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS., Annual Report, 1825 ; Minutes of Board of Mana- 
gers of American Colonization Society, MS., vol. i, pp. 358, 359, 369, 
383, 462, 466, 468, 483. 

82 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety MS vol. i, pp. 372, 374, 410, 428, 429, 430, 463, 504, 516, 561, 
664, 665 J African Repository, vol. v, p. 128. 

83 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. no. 283, pp. 421-422, " Relating to 
African Colonization, etc.," MS. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 79 

approval of the work of the Society, as did the General 
Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, and the Episcopal 
Convention of Virginia. 84 Before 1826 and again, between 
1826 and 1830, the General Conference of the Methodist 
Church had approved the scheme ; likewise, the Baptist Gen- 
eral Convention. 85 In 1827 it was heartily endorsed by the 
Massachusetts and the Connecticut Conventions of Congre- 
gational Clergy, and by the Ohio Methodist District Confer- 
ence. 86 But the talented and well known Samuel M. Wor- 
cester, college professor, senator, clergyman, and writer, 
called attention to a significant fact, in his correpondence 
with the Society : 

There is another difficulty, which you will find opposing your 
efforts in this Commonwealth. It arises from the state of religious 
parties. The Orthodox and Unitarians seldom unite in the promo- 
tion of a benevolent object. Now it happens, that almost all our 
leading political men are Unitarians. It is not to be disguised that 
the influence of these men is wanted to give a State Society Auxil- 
iary to the A. C. S. a certain kind of popularity. At the same time 
the orthodox are the people on whom you are to rely for efficient 
and permanent patronage. Whether the two parties can be brought 
to act in concert in regard to Colonization, is I think a hard 
question. 87 

Prior to 1826 the legislatures of Virginia, Maryland, Ten- 
nessee, Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and 
Indiana had officially approved the colonization project as 
carried on by the Society. 88 In 1827 Vermont and Ken- 
tucky expressed themselves, through their legislatures, fa- 
vorable to the Society, as did Ohio, and Kentucky again, in 
1828; Pennsylvania and Indiana, in 1829; Massachusetts, 
in 183 1 ; and New York and Maryland, in 1832. The Dela- 
ware Legislature likewise gave its approval. 89 The reso- 

84 African Repository, vol. i, p. 125 ; Minutes of Board of Mana- 
gers of American Colonization Society, MS., June 2, 1823; 27th 
Cong., 3d sess.., H. Rept. no. 283, pp. 421-422. 

85 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 343-344.* Letters of American 
Colonization Society, MS., Martin Ruter to Gurley, Cincinnati, 
Ohio, June 27, 1828. 

86 African Repository, vol. iii, pp. 118-120. 

87 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Worcester, 
Amherst College, Nov. 16, 1829. 

88 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 343-344- 

89 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. no. 283, pp. 926-936. 



80 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

lution of the Massachusetts Legislature was in the following 
words: "That the Legislature of Massachusetts view with 
great interest the efforts made by the American Colonization 
Society in establishing an asylum on the Coast of Africa 
for the free people of color of the United States ; and that, 
in the opinion of this Legislature, it is a subject eminently 
deserving the attention and aid of Congress, so far as shall 
be consistent with the powers of Congress, the rights of the 
several States of the Union, and the rights of the individuals 
who are the objects of those efforts." The Pennsylvania 
Legislature declared, "Their removal [that of the free peo- 
ple of color] from among us would not only be beneficial 
to them, but highly auspicious to the best interests of our 
country." The Indiana Legislature expressed " unqualified 
approbation." 

As to public sentiment in the Middle and New England 
States, David Hale, of the New York Journal of Commerce, 
said : " So far as I have been able to understand public sen- 
timent here, it is entirely (among evangelical Christians at 
least) in favor of the Society, and its objects are believed 
to be attainable. The principal thing to be established, I 
think, is a firm conviction that the affairs of the Society are 
always judiciously managed. It has been thought that there 
was in some instances a want of system and order." 90 One 
of the Society's agents in Vermont reported: "There is a 
very general impression in these States that we are coming 
up to the work about as fast as could be expected and that 
the Southern States are not doing their part." 91 Theodore 
Frelinghuysen wrote, of New Jersey : " Public feeling is 
against us — it regards the scheme as visionary — and nothing 
but an experiment conducted upon decided and liberal prin- 
ciples will correct the views of the great majority of our 
citizens." 92 Jared Sparks said : " The cause is one of great 
importance, and cannot be supported with too much zeal or 
force." 93 The editor of the Vermont Chronicle thought: 

90 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Sept. 7, 1826. 

91 Ibid., Myron Tracy to Gurley, Hartford, Conn., October 3, 1826. 

92 Ibid., Frelinghuysen, Newark, N. J., Feb. 3, 1827. 

93 Ibid., Sparks to Gurley, 1827. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS bl 

" There is not, we believe, another benevolent enterprise on 
earth, so well calculated to secure the favorable opinion and 
enlist the hearty good will of all men, as is this, when its 
objects and bearings are fully understood." 94 The Con- 
necticut society reported, in 1829: "Only one opinion is ex- 
pressed among our citizens, and that opinion is unqualified 
approbation." 95 

From the South, particularly the lower South, reports 
were not so favorable. A South Carolinian wrote in 1827 : 
" I am truly sorry I cannot procure more friends and aid to 
the Society. I am however determined to persevere, under 
the belief that opposition will give way to information. 
This however is the great difficulty. The press, in the State, 
is mostly against the Society. Things in its favor are uni- 
formly excluded and things against it are spread abroad." 96 
Rev. William Winans, a prominent Mississippi Methodist 
preacher and an agent of the Society, wrote : " I am per- 
suaded that the efforts of an agent would be of vast impor- 
tance: but the selection must be judicious." 97 Clergymen 
from South Carolina and Georgia reported much hostility 
to the Society in those States. 98 

Of sentiment in Ohio, one of the general agents of the 
Society, whose territory included that State, reported very 
favorably. 99 Another agent, reporting from the same State, 
said: 

Among the members, we number the Governor, Auditor and Treas- 
urer of the State, Speaker of the Senate, a considerable number of 
Senators and Representatives, respectable and influential citizens. 
But sir, though the attempt will doubtless be triumphant, I frankly 
confess, that I have met strong opposition, resulting from ignorance 
of the nature and design of the A. C. Soc. The great, popular 
objection is, that it is a scheme of slaveholders, to strengthen the 
bonds of slavery, by the removal of the free blacks. You may say 
that I have the means, at once of refuting these ungenerous slan- 

94 African Repository, vol. iv, p. 142. 

95 Ibid., vol. v, p. 121. 

96 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., H. McMellan, 
of South Carolina, Feb. 23, 1827. 

97 Ibid., Winans, Centreville, Miss., Feb. 27, 1827. 

99 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Canton, Ohio, 
B. O. Peers to Gurley, Nov. 1, 1826. 
6 



82 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

ders ; but, sir, this is hard to accomplish, however ample the means, 
when men will neither hear nor read and are pertinaceously wedded 
to their errors. The cause however, gains ground very obviously 
and will achieve a general conquest. It is the cause of justice, of 
humanity, of God, and shall prevail. 100 

Few men in Virginia were more competent than W. M. 
Atkinson, of Petersburg, to give an accurate report of senti- 
ment in that State. In 1827 he was greatly discouraged, 
for the success of the Society in its operations in the South. 
He said: 

_ To see a people to whom I am thus closely bound by ties of affec- 
tion, differing from me, on any question so important and so inter- 
esting ~as this, would of itself be painful. But there is another and 
a more legitimate source- of painful feeling. One of the strongest 
recommendations of the Colon. Soc. in my eyes, has always been 
the indirect but powerful influence which I thought it would exert 
on the very existence of that fell destroyer of the prosperity and the 
morals, of our land, slavery. I hoped it' would do this by keeping 
the public mind fixed on the subject, and by showing the practica- 
bility of removing the unhappy race ... to the land of their fathers, 
whilst it carefully avoided touching those points, which could not 
even be discussed without awakening the most unkind and bitter 
feelings. Hence I regarded every friend gained by the Society in 
the larger slaveholding States as equal to two friends in any other 
region. . . . Now I have seen with deep regret that the enemies of 
the Society in this part of Virginia, (and I fear it is the case 
throughout the Southeastern States,) are increasing in number and 
violence. . . . Do you desire to know the cause? So far as I can 
judge, (and I have used all the means in my power to learn the true 
reason,) it is the application made last winter and it is supposed to 
be renewed next winter, to Congress for aid. The people of this 
region, at least an overwhelming majority of them, believe that Con- 
gress have no power to grant that aid. I will not stop to ask 
whether their opinions are right or wrong. ... It is sufficient that 
they do hold these opinions — and furthermore, if upon any topic 
they would watch with double jealously the movements of Congress, 
it is upon such as are in the most distant manner connected with 
our black population. ... I feel constrained to express the opinion 
that if the Managers and the Society do persevere in making their 
application to Congress they do it at the cost of alienating almost all 
their friends in the Southern Atlantic States. Hence they must 
lose not only whatever pecuniary aid they have expected from this 
quarter, but they must abandon forever the hope, of operating on 
the public mind in the manner above hinted, so as ultimately to exert 
a powerful influence on the total voluntary abolition of slavery. 101 

Yet General John H. Cocke, a prominent figure in the 
colonization cause, wrote more hopefully of Virginia. He 

100 Ibid., Rev. M. Henkle, Columbus, Ohio, Jan. 4, 1827. 
*J 101 Ibid., Atkinson to Gurley, Petersburg, Va., July 4, 1827. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 83 

thought the cause was gaining ground, although he thought 
that political agitation had done it injury in certain parts of 
the State. 102 

The fact is that it was a very difficult matter to keep the 
colonization movement entirely distinct from the discus- 
sions during political campaigns. This was true, not be- 
cause Colonization leaders sought to work through the 
channels of political parties, but because Colonization was 
too meaty a bone, over which political aspirants could 
harangue, to be entirely ignored. In January, 1827, La- 
trobe wrote : 

Clay I see has been helping himself to a ride on our shoulders — 
but as he has no doubt been of service to us, I will not scrutinize 
too closely into his motives. . . . Weems [a Maryland Congressman, 
who insisted on favoring Colonization, in spite of his unpopularity 
and his inability to ride like a Clay] is an ass, aye, a very ass. 103 

Of the public men of Virginia who, in 1827, opposed the 
Society, William B. Giles stands out prominently. William 
Maxwell, prominent in Virginia as college president, legis- 
lator, and Colonizationist, wrote : 

I cannot tell you what you are to think of our Virginia Assembly, 
for I really don't know what to think of them myself. They cer- 
tainly seem to hang back most shabbily in this great business of our 
Society. But the truth is, I suppose, they are many of them still 
wofully ignorant of the whole nature and progress of our engage- 
ment, and I have had some proof of it that would amuse and amaze 
and distress you all together. 

But he thinks that at the next session of the legislature : 

We shall be able to obtain an act that will please you — Governor 
Giles notwithstanding. 

I should have liked hugely to have taken this political mounte- 
bank in hand, as you wish me to do; but have been restrained from 
meddling with him for two or three weighty reasons. In the first 
place his [policies] are such tissues of nonsense and paganism that 
they can do no harm, I think, except with incurables. 2ly, he is 
such a prince of hoaxers, and has such power of misleading the 
simple, and all who are willing enough to be duped by him, that I 
do not think it would be good policy to irritate [him into] more 
active hostility against our scheme if we can help it. . . . and lastly, 
I am more and more satisfied that it is our duty to pursue this great 
subject with the tone and spirit of the gospel in meekness instruct- 



102 Ibid., Cocke to Gurley, Fluvanna County, Va., July 7, 1827. 

103 Ibid., Latrobe to Gurley, Baltimore, Jan. 27, 1827. 



84 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

ing them that oppose themselves if peradventure God will give them 
grace to the acknowledging of the truth. So I shall let him alone, 
for the present at least — and especially since he is become (by a 
fantastic revolution of the wheel of fortune) our Governor elect 1 — 
for which I am most heartily sorry of course. 104 

William M. Blackford, the most important Colonization- 
ist living in Fredericksburg, Virginia, wrote, in 1828: 

I cannot forbear congratulating you on the active hostility to our 
scheme of the miserable wretch now at the head of affairs in Vir- 
ginia. The suicidal infelicity of his arguments is never dangerous 
to any cause but the one he supports. I know of several who have 
become friends simply because Giles is an enemy. Any scheme of 
benevolence within the level of his comprehension or approbation, 
would be received with suspicion — and e converso his denunciation 
received as highest praise and commendation. 

I have reason to believe that a great change is about to take place 
in Virginia — she will I have no doubt become decidedly the advocate 
of colonization. The coming year (in which the question of con- 
vention will be settled) is big with her fate. 

I cannot omit to state, as an evidence of the progress of our cause, 
that the announcement of our intention to have a public address ex- 
cited no other feeling than that of approbation, whereas, had anyone 
attempted some 8 or 10 years ago to make a speech on the subject, 
he would in all probability have been mobbed. 105 

It was significant that the legislature refused to consider 
resolutions hostile to the Society, submitted by the Giles 
party. 106 

During the years 1 827-1 829, the Society was viewed, at 
least in some of the Northern and Western States, as a part 
of the Clay machine. Clay had supported it so consistently 
that it was brought into every contest in which he was a 
leading character. And even today, his support of it will 
be by many considered a support purely for party purposes. 
And yet Clay's support of colonization was the logical out- 
come of his whole political course, and any other position 
would have been inconsistent with the public policy of 
the man. 

If now it be asked again, why did not Congress appro- 
priate funds to carry on the work of the Society, the answer 
may be somewhat simplified by this discussion of the state 

104 Ibid., Wm. Maxwell to American Colonization Society, MS., 
Norfolk, Va., Feb. 24, 1827. 

105 Ibid., Blackford to Gurley, Feb. 26, 1828. 

. 106 Ibid., D. J. Burr, Richmond, Va., to Gurley, March 10, 1828. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 85 

of public opinion in the different sections of the Union. 
The congressmen from South Carolina and Georgia would 
not support such an appropriation because South Carolina 
and Georgia were wedded to the system of slavery, and 
looked upon the Society as a form of New England aboli- 
tionism. 107 The hostility was made all the more pronounced 
by the fact that the political acrobats made capital of the 
opposition and used it as a favorite issue. They associated 
it, in their campaigns, with the tariff and internal improve- 
ments. Charles Coatesworth Pinckney who, ten years be- 
fore, had been one of the most liberal contributors in 
Charleston to the Society, was now in 1830 calling the 
scheme both cruel and absurd. The editor of the official 
journal of the Society sized up the situation in these two 
Southern States as follows : 

Voluntary emancipation begins to follow in the train of Coloniza- 
tion, and the advocates of perpetual slavery are indignant at wit- 
nessing in effectual operation, a scheme which permits better men 
than themselves to exercise without restraint the purest and the 
noblest feelings of our nature. 108 

The opposition in Virginia, and doubtless in North Caro- 
lina, was not from the enemies, but from the friends of 
colonization. Even William H. Fitzhugh had declared that, 
firm as he was in his advocacy of the colonization scheme, 
and favorable as he was to asking for an appropriation 
for it from Congress, he would actively oppose such an 
appropriation if he thought it was not in keeping with the 
spirit of the Constitution to grant it. It was undoubtedly 
the belief in Virginia and, at least to a considerable extent, 
in North Carolina, that such an appropriation was not war- 
ranted by that instrument. The view of Atkinson, a leader 
in the colonization movement in Virginia, has already been 
set forth. Rev. John Cooke of Hanover County, Virginia, 

107 Ibid., Rev. Wm. Meade, Feb. 21, 1827; S. K. Talmage to Gur- 
ley, Augusta, Ga., May 29, 1829; Rev. B. M. Palmer, Charleston, S. 
C, Aug. 4, 1830; African Repository, vol. i, pp. 161-164, 1 80-1 91 ; 
vol. ii, pp. 22-23; vol. iii, p. 172 ff.; vol. ix, pp. 228-229; vol. vi, p. 
193 ff. ; Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization 
Society, Apr. 25, 1831. 

108 African Repository, vol. vi, pp. 193-209. 



86 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

had been requested to distribute memorials praying for aid 
for the Society from Congress. His reply was : " Even 
those who have reflected on the subject and are favorably 
disposed towards it, are generally opposed to Congress in- 
terfering. I am rather afraid that, with their present lim- 
ited knowledge of the subject, their many mistaken views 
of it, and the morbid state of feeling that exists about here 
respecting the assumptions and implied powers of the Gen- 
eral Government, it will be dangerous to offer the memorial 
for signatures." 109 

Probably the most powerful, or at least the most influen- 
tial, argument that was made against federal appropriation 
in aid of the Society, was that contained in a report, pre- 
sented by Senator L. W. Tazewell, of Virginia, in reply to 
many memorials asking that the Society receive federal aid. 
The burden of the argument was the unconstitutionality of 
appropriating federal revenue for the purposes proposed; 
the unconstitutionality of holding as a dependency a colony 
that, from its very position, could never become an integral 
part of the American system and that, therefore, was not 
contemplated by the fathers of the Constitution ; the danger 
involved in any effort, on the part of the Federal Govern- 
ment "to intrude itself within the limits of the States, for 
the purpose of withdrawing from them, an important por- 
tion of their population"; and the probability that such a 
move would soon result in the Federal Government being 
called upon by the States to pay " something like an equiva- 
lent for the slaves, in order to obtain their manumission." 110 

Nor were these constitutional scruples confined to those 
who lived in Virginia. Gerrit Smith himself doubted the 
power of the Federal Government to make appropriations 
for this purpose. 111 And he said of the Van Buren men in 
the New York Legislature, that they were as full of consti- 

109 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Rev. John 
Cooke, Hanover County, Va., Feb. 9, 1827. 

110 African Repository, vol. iii, pp. 161-172. 

111 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., G. Smith, Jan. 
5, 1830. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 87 

tutional scruples as the South Carolinians were. 112 When, 

in 1835, Clay made another attempt in the Senate, Maxwell 

thought that if the Virginia Legislature failed to take action 

favorable to the Society, it would be because of the effort 

made in the federal body. 113 An agent of the Society wrote 

in 1837: 

I have just come from Mr. Ritchie's office, where I found him 
engaged in writing an article, calculated to do away in a great degree 
the good effect of what he has said before; and all drawn forth by 
the discussion in Congress. ... It is a matter of universal regret 
among our friends here that Mr. Clay moved the subject in Con- 
gress. 114 

Among those Virginia colonizationists who did not agree 
with their colonization brethren of the strict construction 
school were John Marshall and James Madison. On this 
point they were both prepared to admit the power of the 
Federal Government to offer aid, it seems . But they thought 
the most unobjectionable scheme, and the one most likely 
to overcome popular prejudice, was that proposed by Rufus 
King in the United States Senate, February 18, 1825 : 

That, as the portion of the existing funded debt of the United 
States, for the payment of which the public land of the United 
States is pledged, shall have been paid off, then and thenceforth, the 
whole of the public land of the United States, with the net proceeds 
of all future sales thereof, shall constitute and form a fund, which 
is hereby appropriated, and the faith of the United States is hereby 
pledged, that the said fund shall be inviolably applied to aid the 
emancipation of such slaves, within any of the United States, and 
to aid the removal of such slaves, and the removal of such free per- 
sons of color, in any of the said States, as by the laws of the States 
respectively may be allowed to be emancipated, or removed, to any 
territory or country without the limits of the United States of 
America. 

Of this plan Marshall said: 

It is undoubtedly of great importance to retain the countenance and 
protection of the general government. . . . The power of the gov- 
ernment to afford this aid is not, I believe, contested. I regret that 
its power to grant pecuniary aid is not equally free from question. 
On this subject I have thought and still think that the proposition 
made by Mr. King in the Senate is the most unexceptionable and 
the most effective that can be devised. 115 

112 Ibid., Smith to Gurley, April 16, 1832. 

113 Ibid., Rev. C. W. Andrews to Gurley, Richmond, Feb. 1, 1836. 

114 Ibid., Rev. C. W. Andrews, Richmond, Feb. 1, 1837. 

115 Ibid., Marshall to Gurley, Richmond, Va., December 13, 1831. 



88 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Mr. Madison favored, likewise, the plan of Mr. King. " I 
am aware," he said, " of the constitutional obstacle which 
has presented itself ; but if the general will be reconciled 
to an application of the territorial fund to the removal of 
the colored population, a grant to Congress of the necessary 
authority, would be carried with little delay through the 
forms of the constitution." 116 

The active and open opposition of the States of the South- 
east, the constitutional objections that prevailed in other of 
the Southern States, and in some of the Middle States, and 
the various local opinions that predominated in portions of 
New England and the Western States, such objections, for 
instance, as the doubt of the practicability of the scheme ; 
the belief that pervaded many localities that the Society's 
chief purpose was to increase the value of slaves ; and the 
feeling, now becoming deeply rooted, that the remedy for 
slavery was immediate emancipation rather than settlement 
on the coast of Africa — these causes are sufficient to ex- 
plain why the Society was unable to secure from Congress 
direct appropriations in aid of colonization. 

And so the Society was forced to depend, at the time of 
its greatest promise, upon the contributions voluntarily sent 
in. The amount contributed from the year 1820 to the end 
of 1830 was $112,842.89. The amount of the expenditures 
during the same period was $106,367.72. The number of 
emigrants transported to Liberia was 1430. The total cost, 
per emigrant, including in this amount not only the trans- 
portation and subsistence expenses, but also salaries paid to 
officers of the Society both in the United States and Liberia, 
the support of public schools, buildings, presents to native 
kings, fortifications, expenses of court house and jail in the 
colony, expenses of opening roads, and founding settle- 
ments, was $74.38. 117 In spite of the criticism of the Aboli- 
tionists that the public was being imposed upon by men who 
used too large a part of the contributions in the payment of 

116 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 305-306. 

117 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Feb. 20, 1834. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 



8 9 



office salaries, it is difficult to see how so much could have 
been done with the expenditure of so limited an amount. 

The expeditions of emigrants between 1820 and the end 
of 1830 are as follows, with number of emigrants, by- 
States : 118 



Year. 


Vessel. 


> 


u 




O 


•6 


u 

Q 


> 


fii 


a 

a 

H 


1 




Total. 


1820 


Elizabeth 


9 








2 


2 


41 








32 


86 


I82I 


Nautilus 


24 








8 














32 


1822 


Strong 










26 












10 


36 


1823 


Oswego 


17 








24 












19 


60 


1424 


Cyrus 
Fidelity 


103 








4 












1 


103 
5 


1825 


Hunter 


48 


17 








1 












66 


I826 


Vine 
Indian Chief 


18 


118 






12 






32 








33° 
148 


1827 


Doris 
Randolph 


8 
22 


74 


26 




10 
65 




15 










92 

104 6 

26 


1828 


Nautilus 


7 


I4.S 






12 














164 


1829 


Harriet 


132 


1 






17 














150 


1830 


Liberia 


45 


1 














10 




1 


S 8 " 


" 


Montgomery 


30 


2 




30 


7 


1 












70 


11 


Carolinian 


78 


1 




9 


9 




I 






8 




106 


** 


Valador 


39 


4i 




















8i d 


Totals. 


18 


580 


400 


26 


39 


196 


4 


57 


32 


10 


8 


63 


1,420 



a One also from Massachusetts. 
b Two from Delaware. 
c One from Connecticut. 
d One from Alabama. 

Prior to 1827 the emigrants transported were nearly all 
free negroes ; after that time, many of them were recently 
emancipated slaves and, in very many cases, slaves who had 
been emancipated or manumitted for the express purpose of 
removal and who would not have been given their liberty 
had it not been for the Colonization Society. 119 

If the Society had had the financial support of the federal 

118 African Repository, vol. x, p. 292. It will be noted that the 
total number of emigrants here given is 1420, whereas the number 
reported by the Board is 1430. The cause of the discrepancy is not 
apparent. 

119 Lugenbeel. 



90 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

government', there is no doubt that its operations would 
have been greatly enlarged and that the number of slaves 
liberated would have reached far into the thousands. At 
this time, as at every other time, up to the proclamation of 
emancipation, the active directors of the Society, the agents, 
the colonial agents and governors, and the active members 
in every part of the Union were opponents of slavery, and 
looked forward, some of them, to its comparatively speedy, 
and by far the larger number of them, to its ultimate, aboli- 
tion. Fearing the increase of the free negro population, the 
legislatures had passed laws restricting very materially the 
right to emancipate slaves. Indeed, emancipation, without 
the removal from the State of those emancipated, was made 
a violation of the law. And yet, the emancipations went 
on in the Southern tier of the Middle Atlantic States, and 
there is no telling how far it would have gone had the So- 
ciety's efforts not been circumscribed by the limitation of 
its resources. Monroe told Elliott Cresson that he believed 
the Society could secure the emancipation of ten thousand 
slaves in the single State of Virginia if it would send them 
to Liberia. Undoubtedly the Society was favorably known 
in every part of the Union in 1829, although its friends were 
comparatively few in Georgia and South Carolina. 

It was just at this hour of triumph and of promise that 
there arose, in the North and West, the most virulent, need- 
less, and unscrupulous opposition the Society was ever 
called on to face. And this was but one of several causes 
of the difficulties it had to encounter between 1831 and 1839. 
The Abolition offensive, the secession of auxiliary societies, 
financial difficulties, distress in the colony, and a reorgani- 
zation of the Society — these are the topics of real impor- 
tance that ought to be discussed, in a study of its operations. 

Opposition from the Garrisonians was like a bolt from 
the blue. Garrison himself began life a friend of the So- 
ciety. Arthur Tappan, James G. Birney, who was for 
months one of its active agents, Gerrit Smith, who gave 
thousands of dollars to the Society before the time of his 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 9 1 

defection — all these were Colonizationists before they were 
Abolitionists. Garrison had addressed a Boston audience 
in a speech favoring colonization ; it was while he was 
working for the Society, not after he went over to the Gar- 
risonians, that Birney decided to give up his slaves ; Gerrit 
Smith, up to 1835, thought that the Society was not only 
not pro-slavery, but that it stressed emancipation too con- 
sistently to retain the active cooperation of the South. And 
when these men ceased to be Colonizationists, they did so, 
not because they had discovered some ulterior and hidden, 
or dishonorable motive. The swan songs of Birney and 
Smith, each requiring a considerable part of the issue of 
the Liberator in which it appeared, were very frank dis- 
avowals of the discovery of such motives. The opprobrium 
and the charges were evolutions, largely of Garrison's mind. 
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1830, 
with but four dissenting votes recommended the taking of 
Fourth of July collections for the objects of the Society. 120 
John A. Dix of New York wrote, in the same year : " The 
current of opinion is with the Institution; and it will be 
borne on to the fulfilment of its object." 121 Thomas Clark- 
son, of England, wrote: 

For myself I am free to confess, that of all the things that have 
been going on in our favor since 1787, when the abolition of the 
slave trade was first seriously proposed ; that which is now going 
on in the United States is the most important. It surpasses every- 
thing which has yet occurred. No sooner had your Colony been 
established on Cape Mesurado, than there appeared to be a dispo- 
sition among the owners of slaves in the U. S. to give t'hem freedom 
voluntarily without compensation and to allow them to be sent to 
the land of their ancestors. To me this is truly astonishing. 122 

Wilberf orce wrote : " You have gladdened my heart by con- 
vincing me, that sanguine as had been my hopes of the happy 
effects to be produced by your Institution, all my anticipa- 
tions are scanty and cold compared with the reality." 123 

120 African Repository, vol. vi, p. 91. 

121 Ibid., vol. vi, pp. 163-169. 

122 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., London, Oct. 
6, 1 83 1. E. Cresson to Gurley. 

128 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Nov. 29, 1831. 



92 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

The whole State of Virginia was deeply stirred by the 
Southampton Insurrection, as was also at least one neigh- 
boring State, Maryland, and the cause was greatly re- 
vived. 124 In the midst of Garrison's tirades, George Ban- 
croft and Governor Levi Lincoln, of Massachusetts, were 
both friends of the Society. 125 An agent of the Society, 
traveling by a circuitous route from New York to Maine, 
had conversed with editors, clergymen, and others ac- 
quainted with public sentiment. He reported that he had 
talked with from ninety to one hundred editors. Of these, 
only four expressed hostility to the Society, one of the four 
being the editor of the Liberator. More than nine-tenths 
of these editors expressed friendly feeling towards the So- 
ciety. He had talked with more than three hundred clergy- 
men, only three of whom expressed hostility to it. He 
quoted very favorable resolutions passed by the Methodist 
District Conference of Penobscot District, of the Baptist 
Convention of Maine, and of the Baptist Convention of 
Massachusetts. 126 R. H. Toler, editor of the Lynchburg 
Virginian, wrote : " Among the people of this section of 
country, there is very little opposition felt or manifested to 
the scheme of African Colonization. Men, of all creeds in 
politics and of all sects in religion, cooperate in advancing 
its interests." 127 Of the Valley of Virginia, William C. 
Matthews wrote: "As far as I know, throughout all this 
valley, there is an almost universal feeling in favor of your 
American Colonization Society." 128 

And yet Gurley, the Society's secretary, writing from 
Richmond, Virginia, where he had gone during the meeting 
of the legislature, wrote to a member of the Board of 

124 Ibid., Atkinson to Gurley, Petersburg, Va., Sept. 10, 1831 ; Ben- 
jamin Brand to Gurley, Richmond, Va., Oct. 5, 1831 ; Brand to Gur- 
ley, Richmond, Va., Oct. 8, 1831 ; Gen. John H. Cocke, Sr., to Gur- 
ley, Steamboat on Chester Ricer, Oct. 7, 1831 ; D. J. Burr, Rich- 
mond, Va., Oct. 17, 1831; Wm. Maxwell, Nov. 30, 1831. 

125 African Repository, vol. ix, p. 24. 

126 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Wm. L. Stone, 
N. Y., Apr. 19, 1833. 

127 Ibid., Toler to Gurley, Lynchburg, Va., Aug. 22, 1833. 

128 Ibid., W. C. Matthews, Martinsburg, Va., Aug. 13, 1833. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 93 

Managers of the Society : " We can account for the course 
of the Legislature only by supposing either that professions 
of regard for colonization have been insincere — that aboli- 
tionism has alienated the members from colonization — or 
that they have changed their principles and go for perpetual 
slavery — something may be owing to each of these supposed 
facts." 129 To him who is tolerably acquainted with Vir- 
ginia history, the statement of Toler and that of Gurley are 
full of significance. An extract from a letter of William 
H. Fitzhugh to the Society in 1829 will throw much light 
on these statements. Fitzhugh was at that time a member 
of the Virginia legislature. 

We have no chance to do anything for the Col. Soc. this winter, 
nor indeed ever again, till our representation [the representation of 
Eastern and Western Virginia, in the Legislature] is equalized. The 
present is the ablest legislature I have ever seen assembled here; 
and it is also completely drilled for party purposes. On the subject 
of the Col. Soc. we can carry with us the representatives of a ma- 
jority of the people; but the lower country, by its excess of repre- 
sentation, can control all our movements. We have just concluded 
one of the most protracted as well as able debates I have ever heard, 
on the subject of South Carolina opposition to the tariff . . . one 
of the majority acknowledged, in debate, his belief that these were 
the last resolutions in favor of State rights that would ever be 
passed. My own opinion is that the effect of the convention will be 
to revolutionize the politics of Virginia entirely — " a consummation 
most devoutly to be wished." 130 

From these statements and from very many others that 
might be added, it is evident that the legislature of Virginia 
did not represent the public opinion of the entire State, but 
only of the Eastern section of the State. If, as the Aboli- 
tionists were just at this time charging, the Colonization 
Society was an invention of slaveholders and, of course 
primarily Virginia slaveholders, to increase the value of 
their slaves, eastern Virginia sentiment would have been 
more favorable than western Virginia sentiment towards 
the Colonization Society. Western Virginia was certainly 
in no mood to be foremost in favoring an organiza- 
tion gotten up by the slave owners of the eastern counties 

129 Ibid., Gurley to Joseph Gales, Richmond, Va., March 16, 1837. 

130 Ibid., Fitzhugh to Gurley, Richmond, Feb. 22, 1829. 



94 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

for their own pecuniary profit. The opposition between 
these two sections was active and the hostility acute, 131 and 
particularly in the attitude each took towards the question 
of slavery. The fact that it was the legislature that held 
back and the western part of the State that urged support 
of the Society, is very important evidence that Garrison's 
accusations were baseless. 

In the West Clay, of Kentucky, and Elisha Whittlesey, 
were probably the most influential of all the Colonization- 
ists. In the Southwest, there was zealous support of the 
Society. Hundreds of slaves were given over to it for 
transportation to the Colony. The Presbytery of Missis- 
sippi, in 1833, passed resolutions expressing " unabated con- 
fidence in the principles and plans of the American Coloni- 
zation Society . . . and once more recommend it cordially 
to their congregations." 132 But in South Carolina and 
Georgia, opposition was still pronounced. 133 Y. S. Grimke 
wrote from Charleston : " Let me advise for your sakes and 
for the sake of the Union, that until this crisis be past you 
do not send an agent at all, not even to explain your views 
to the colored people, — so as to encourage them to emigrate." 

It was just at this time, when sentiment was very favor- 
able to the Colonization scheme, and when the charges made 
by Garrison and his coadjutors were utterly out of place 
and uncalled for, that the storm of that radical leader broke 
upon the Society. An account of that opposition will re- 
ceive more attention hereafter. It is enough, here, to say 
that Secretary Gurley, writing from New York in 1834 
declared : " The Abolitionists are certainly gaining ground, 
and will carry a large portion of the North with them unless 
we can find agents of zeal and talent to defend the cause in 
this part of the country." 134 In 1835 he thought there were 

131 C. H. Ambler, Sectionalism in Virginia, passim. 

132 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Pine Grove, 
Miss., Feb. 23, 1834. 

133 Ibid., J. Corning to Gurley, Charleston, S. C, Feb. 10, 1831 ; 
Grimke to Gurley, Charleston, S. C, May 17, 1831 ; African Reposi- 
tory, vol. xiii, pp. 201-206. 

134 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to 
Gales, N. Y., Apr. 8, 1834. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 95 

nearly a dozen weekly newspapers, besides many other pe- 
riodicals, " in great part devoted to the work of destroying 
the influence of this Society." 135 And the influence that 
resulted from the Abolition crusade was great and imme- 
diate, as will appear from a letter from the New England 
philanthropist, Thomas H. Gallaudet : " But in confidence, 
I must tell you, that the Col. cause must recede in its influ- 
ence in New England, unless it is made to operate, (and 
avowedly so by those who advocate it here), as one of the 
means for the abolition of slavery." 136 At a later time the 
Society regained some of the ground it had lost in New 
England; but for approximately ten years it was almost 
impotent in that section. 

Another difficulty was the secession of auxiliary socie- 
ties. During the decade from 1830 to 1840, the Maryland, 
Pennsylvania, New York, Mississippi, and Louisiana socie- 
ties adopted policies either partially or entirely independent 
of the parent organization. The Maryland Society was the 
first to assume an independent course, and its independence 
was practically complete. It established a settlement of its 
own at Cape Palmas, miles south of the older settlements ; 
the Pennsylvania and New York societies established a set- 
tlement at Bassa Cove, between Monrovia and Cape Palmas; 
the Mississippi and Louisiana societies established a settle- 
met at Sinou. Eventually all these societies were restored 
to their auxiliary relation; but during the period of their 
independent action they were a source of weakness to the 
parent Society. With all their good wishes at the parting, 
they invariably competed with the activities of the older 
organization. Not only so; but they almost nullified the 
efforts of the Society to raise funds in territory over which 
they claimed jurisdiction. They also sent out their own 
expeditions and controlled their own policies, which some- 
times fell short of the requirements of wisdom. 

For instance, the Pennsylvania society, mindful of the 

135 Ibid., Gurley, Washington, D. C, Mar. 23, 1835. 

1 36 Ibid., Gallaudet to Gurley, Hartford, Conn., July 5, 1838. 



g6 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

origin of the Keystone colony, established a settlement on 
peace principles, forbidding the possession or use of arms 
therein. The result was that the Africans made an attack 
which proved so disastrous that the surviving settlers had 
to be taken to a protected settlement. Furthermore, so 
long as the parent Society was able to hold together the 
auxiliaries, it was able to unify the aims and feelings of 
organizations widely separated, in distance and also in the 
environment of opinion in which they lived. Numerous 
societies under a common head would entertain, in general, 
a common opinion and have common aims. Hardly had 
the Maryland Society seceded before its policy began to 
differ from that of the American Colonization Society. 
And after the withdrawal, for many, though not all, pur- 
poses, of the Pennsylvania and New York Societies, they 
immediately began to approximate more and more closely 
the moderate Abolitionists of the North. Separate action 
on the part of these organizations was a severe blow to the 
parent society, and for years a large part of its energy was 
directed to the restoration of auxiliary relations. 

The movement for separate action, on the part of the 
Maryland Society began, it seems, early in 183 1. Various 
causes have been given for the action that was then taken. 
Elliot Cresson, whose zeal for Colonization was equaled 
only by his exaggerated views of the business inefficiency 
of the Board of Managers of the parent Society, declared 
that the reason back of Maryland's defection was her dis- 
trust of the Board's ability to handle properly the funds — 
not the dishonesty but the business incompetency of it. 137 
And it is certainly true that after repeated meetings in an 
attempt to adjust satisfactorily the differences that had 
arisen, for the Board of Managers saw in Maryland's action 
the setting of a precedent that was likely to rise to plague 
them, the point upon which negotiations were finally broken 
off was in the discussion upon the disposition of funds re- 

1,7 Ibid., Cresson, Philadelphia, Pa., Apr. 12, 1831. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 97 

ceived into the Maryland treasury. 138 The position of the 
Maryland Society was stated by J. H. B. Latrobe: "We 
agree to make regular returns of our receipts and expendi- 
tures to you and to bear the expences of our colonists in 
Africa; but not a voice was heard in favor of paying or 
placing to your credit one penny of our funds gross or sur- 
plus." 139 By a committee of the Maryland Society it was 
urged that the State could never be rid of the incubus of 
the free negro population until a State organization, pre- 
pared to take a more aggressive part in the accomplishment 
of its purpose than a mere auxiliary to a national organi- 
zation could take, was put into operation. The situation of 
the State and her peculiar problem made necessary, they 
said, a separate organization. 140 What these peculiar con- 
ditions were was set forth as follows, by Latrobe, in a pri- 
vate letter to Gurley in 1834. 

To prove Colonization, two things had to be established. The 
first, that colonies of colored people, capable of self-defence, self 
support, and self government could be founded on the coast of 
Africa. Second, that by means of these colonies, slave-holding 
States could be made free States. The first was proved by you. 
The second remains to be proved. Upon proof of the second now 
hangs the whole system. The first step to be taken to prove it, is 
to get a slave-holding State to determine to make the experiment. 
This, which, three years ago, was hardly within the range of any 
reasonable probability, has been done ; and Maryland is now striving 
to establish the second branch of the proposition, and to prove that, 
by means of colonies on the coast of Africa, a slaveholding State 
may be made a free State. 

Now, it appears to the Board of Managers, that the success of 
Maryland will have such all powerful effect upon Virginia, Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, that the whole influence of 
the friends of colonization, everywhere, ought to be devoted to her 
aid. If colonization, they think, were to stand still, in every other 
State, until Maryland succeeded in her undertaking, yet provided 
she did succeed, no mischief would be done, but, on the contrary, all 
the assistance that had been given her would be amply compensated 
by the then omnipotent influence of her example. 141 

138 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Apr. 4, 1831. 

139 Letters to American Colonization Society, MS., Latrobe to Gur- 
ley, Baltimore, Md., Mar. 30, 1831. 

140 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Apr. 4, 1831. 

141 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Baltimore, Md., 
Latrobe to Gurley, December 29, 1834. 

7 



98 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

The Board of Managers made a very earnest attempt to 
dissuade the Maryland Society from independent action. 
They called attention to the fact that the views of Coloniza- 
tionists in different parts of the country had already begun 
to vary widely, and " the friends of the cause are beginning 
to operate in their several ways, a multiplicity of interests 
will engender collision of views and of vital interests. 
Hence it becomes and continues of paramount importance 
that some salutary control should be concentrated in the Par- 
ent Society." 142 In a continuation of the policy of separate 
action the parent society would be rendered utterly impo- 
tent, for not only would each of the Southern States pur- 
suing that policy, act upon its own local views, but the 
Northern States Societies, seeing that there was no central 
control and no uniformity of policy, would discontinue their 
support. And yet, with the most forceful protest it could 
make, the parent society saw that there was no means of 
compelling the Maryland Society to continue its auxiliary 
relation, and its attitude was that of a willingness to sur- 
render every point at issue, except the vital one of depend- 
ence. Even this the Maryland Society compelled it to give 
up also; and from 1833 the active operations of the two 
societies were entirely separate, the Cape Palmas settle- 
ment and territory comprising about one thousand square 
miles in the southern part of Liberia. Here Maryland sent 
her emigrants and established them under laws which en- 
tirely excluded ardent spirits from the settlement. 143 Within 
the next five years the Maryland Society sent out nine 
expeditions. 144 

In November, 1833, requests came from the Philadelphia 
and New York societies for permission to act with a con- 
siderable degree of independence. They desired to estab- 
lish jointly in Liberia settlers taken out and governed, in 
Africa, almost entirely by themselves. The shadow, but 

142 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., April 4, 1831. 

143 African Repository, vol. xvii, pp. 184-186. 

144 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 33 ft. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 99 

not the substance, of the auxiliary relation was to continue 
as heretofore. Undoubtedly the most energetic and per- 
sistent agitator for this independent relation was the Phila- 
delphian, Elliot Cresson, one of the most zealous partizans 
and certainly the most belligerent Friend the Society ever 
had. His reasons for desiring independence, he said, were: 
(i) the inefficient management of the parent Board of 
Managers, and (2) the unsatisfactory colonial governor re- 
cently appointed and sent out. 145 Also, there is no doubt 
that Cresson was anxious for the establishment, upon 
Quaker principles, of a settlement whose name should be 
Penn, or Benezet. Other reasons doubtless were, the com- 
parative inactivity of the parent Society in sending out emi- 
grants during 1833, arising from a want of funds; also the 
delivery of several speeches at the annual meeting, which 
did not meet with the entire approval of the New York or 
Philadelphia delegates. Also, there is no doubt that the 
charge of Cresson against the colonial governor or agent 
was general in the North Middle States. 146 

Gurley wrote from Philadelphia, where he went in 1835, 
in an effort to reconcile the differences between the Phila- 
delphia and New York Societies, on the one hand, and the 
parent society, on the other, suggesting that the demand for 
independent action had arisen from (1) "the general senti- 
ment of the friends of colonization at the North demanding 
that colonization societies should be avowedly and decidedly 
hostile to slavery," and (2) "a distrust in the management 
of the Board at Washington utterly destructive to its influ- 
ence as the exclusive director of the funds." 147 Indeed, by 
1834, there was excited in the Northern colonization socie- 
ties a strong, and almost uncontrollable, tendency toward 
aggressive action on the subject of slavery, 148 and the dan- 
ger undoubtedly was, not that the Society would tend to 



145 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson, Phila- 
delphia, Nov. 20, 1833. 

146 Ibid., Confidential, Gurley, Philadelphia, Apr. 1, 1834. 

147 Ibid., Gurley to Board of Managers, Philadelphia, May I, 1835. 
" Ibid., Gurley to Fendall, New York, May 31, 1834. 



148 



100 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

perpetuate slavery, but that it was rushing into such radical 
action that it would lose once and forever the cooperation 
of the slaveholding border States. And yet, it was just at 
this time that The Liberator was spreading throughout New 
England the " facts " about the Society, that it was a device 
of the slaveholders to rivet the chains of their slaves ! The 
truth is that The Liberator lived on sectionalism ; the Colo- 
nization Society would have been killed by it. 

The effort of Gurley in this crisis was to inject, by coop- 
eration, the anti-slavery spirit of the North into the South 
and bring about, by peaceable means, the gradual abolition 
of slavery. This danger of a division among the societies, 
so decided as to result, in all likelihood, in a separate organi- 
zation of the northern group of the Middle and the New 
England States, and the resultant alienation of the South 
from the whole movement, was foreseen and dreaded by 
the Board of Managers. "As the population to be espe- 
cially benefitted by this Society mostly reside at the South, 
. . ., it is of extreme importance, that the people of the 
North should remain united with those of the South, in the 
plans and measures that may be devised and executed for 
their good." 149 But it was again as it had been in the case 
of the Maryland Society. The parent society could argue 
and urge but it could not force the Philadelphia and New 
York Societies to continue their former relations. As Gur- 
ley wrote : " If we cannot have things as we would, we must 
do the best we can." The result was a compromise, but a 
compromise in which the associated societies got practically 
all that they asked for. In July, 1834, preparations were 
being made to send to their colony at Bassa Cove one hun- 
dred slaves liberated by Dr. Hawes, of Virginia. The par- 
ent board commented : " it now presents the community 
with the spectacle of more than one hundred freemen, who, 
but for it, would still have been slaves. And one hundred 
more are waiting merely till the parent board, or its auxil- 

149 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., July 3, 1834. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS I 01 

iaries, possess the means to place them as freemen in the 
same company." 150 

As Cresson had been the guiding spirit in the restlessness 
of the Northern societies in their relations with the parent 
body, so, it seems, Robert S. Finley, a son of the Rev. Rob- 
ert Finley, who had a leading part in the organization of the 
Society, was stirring up the Southwest. Of the two men 
Gurley wrote : " Finley and Cresson both, are excentric and 
erratic, but will not fail to stir the elements in their course." 
And if he said of Cresson, "I have just seen Mr. Cresson 
and heard only complaints from him for three hours," he 
could have said the same thing in reference to the direct- 
ness, if not the duration, of Mr. Finley's remarks. There 
is some probability that the desire of the Louisiana and 
Mississippi societies for independent action, resulted more 
directly from the efforts of Mr. Finley, but also more or 
less remotely from the encouragement they received from 
both Latrobe and Cresson. 151 The relations between the 
Mississippi and Louisiana Societies, after they withdrew 
from the status of purely auxiliary societies, were still far 
from independent, and were of comparatively short duration. 

So far was the American Colonization Society from being 
the creature of, and under the dominance of, the Maryland 
and Virginia slaveholder, we have seen that Maryland es- 
tablished an altogether distinct settlement ; and in 1838 the 
Virginia Society was on the verge of following the example 
of her sister State. At the annual meeting of that year a 
motion, made by the Attorney-General of the State, Sidney 
S. Baxter, to recommend to the Board of Managers the 
establishment of an independent colony in Liberia, was car- 
ried, though the Board of Managers did not act favorably 
upon the recommendation. 152 

A third difficulty that the Society had to face during this 

"o Ibid., July 3, 1834. 

161 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to 
Gales, Natchez, Miss., May 9, 1836; Gurley to Fendall, May 11, 1836; 
May 16, 1836; June 3, 1836. 

162 African Repository, vol. xiv, p. 120. 



102 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

eventful decade was the financial embarrassment in which 
it found itself. There was hardly a time, before the Civil 
War, when the Society's opportunities were not limited by 
its means. But it usually managed to keep its head above 
water by refusing to allow its expenditures to exceed its 
revenue. In 1834 the treasury was empty and thousands 
of dollars were due, and there was nothing with which to 
pay. The receipts for the three years, 1831, 1832, and 1833 
were $105,606.69; the expenditures, $115,349.91, leaving a 
deficit for those years of nearly $10,000.00. The number of 
emigrants transported during the same period was 1339. 153 
The receipts, which had never been as much as $20,000.00 
prior to 1830, were $26,583.51 that year; and by 1834, they 
had mounted to $51,662.95. But in 1838 they were only 
$n,597. 154 Of its receipts in 1835, $4079.95 had been se- 
cured as donations ; in 1838, the donations amounted to only 
$2,438.73. 155 The hard times of 1837 doubtless had much 
to do with the decreasing revenue of the Society during the 
last years of the decade. 

And this was not all. The ruinous practice of purchasing 
provisions in Liberia on credit, and paying for them by 
writing drafts on the Board of Managers ; the very unsatis- 
factory and loose condition in which the accounts were kept ; 
the accumulation of accounts, and hence debts with the 
Liberian merchants, of which the Managers were ignorant ; 
and the want of care and economy in Liberia were among 
the causes of a debt which the Board estimated, in 1834, to 
be between $45,000 and $50,000, and which was later esti- 
mated to be some ten to twenty thousand dollars in excess 
of that amount. 158 

How are we to explain this debt? Of the several con- 

168 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Feb. 20, 1834. 

154 Ibid., Feb. 20, 1834; African Repository, vol. xii, p. 28; vol. xv, 
p. 18. 

155 African Repository, vol. xii, p. 28; vol. xv, p. 18. 

166 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Feb. 20, 1834; Letters of American Colonization Society, 
MS., Wilkeson to John Ker, July 25, 1830, no. 680. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS IO3 

tributing causes, the most important, in all probability, were 
the hard times of the decade and the absence of men of 
business ability and experience on the Board of Managers. 
There has been found no evidence whatever that any of 
these men were guilty of personal profit. Even The Lib- 
erator, which exulted in the debt, could make good no 
charge of dishonesty against the managers. But it was a 
wise warning that Cresson, himself a successful business 
man, gave, as early as 1831, when he said: "Your Board 
are so terribly afraid of DEBT, that to save incurring $1000 
now, they subject themselves to two alternatives — starving 
the emigrants, or being drawn on for $5000 [bye] and 
bye." 157 

Provisions should have been purchased in the United 
States, where they could be purchased for a reasonable sum, 
and the Board should have kept itself regularly informed 
of the amount of the drafts it would be called upon to pay, 
if, indeed, it allowed the drawing of drafts without its own 
consent. It should have refused to pay drafts for which 
properly signed vouchers did not appear. These things it 
failed to do and, beginning about 1832, its financial diffi- 
culties began to grow more and more serious. By 1833 its 
drafts were being protested and soon its credit was de- 
stroyed. 158 It was too late to correct the mischief already 
done, but the Managers made an effort to introduce a more 
businesslike system for the future. A salaried treasurer 
was appointed, and he was to be at all times strictly account- 
able to the Board. 159 

At the annual meeting of the Society in 1833, its Mana- 
gers were called upon to submit a " full and detailed state- 
ment " of the origin, rise, and present condition of the debt. 
Its reply was a very frank statement of the facts above set 

157 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to 
Gurley, Philadelphia, Apr. 12, 1831. 

158 Ibid., Gurley to Fendall, New York, June 19, 1833 ; T. W. 
Blight and Gerard, Philadelphia, June 19, 1833. 

159 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Aug. 12, 1833. 



104 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

forth. The opportunities were so great in 1832, it was 
stated, and the tendency of the Society had been so evi- 
dently to bring about the suppression of the slave trade, the 
enlightenment and civilizing of Africa, the removal of the 
"positive impediments to the free exercise of the right to 
emancipate slaves," and to transport to a land where he 
could be not only physically but also mentally and spirit- 
ually free, the " free " man of the United States, that the 
Managers had been led to undertake too much, and with too 
little means or opportunity for supervision. To correct the 
trouble, it was proposed (1) to enlarge the powers of the 
colonial council, so that the colonists might select their own 
officers, make their own laws, and bear the expense of their 
own government; (2) to offer stock on a loan of $50,000 
and provide a sinking fund to relieve them from their pres- 
ent embarrassment. 160 

Early in 1834 Dr. Mechlin, the colonial agent, resigned. 161 
Whether true or false, there had been reports that in the 
colony he had been guilty of profligacy. 162 And the Mana- 
gers subsequently reported on his agency with anything but 
praise. Many of the items in his report were left unex- 
plained. Since 1830 over 1800 gallons of brandy, whiskey, 
and rum had been purchased in the colony, most of it, they 
believed, by Mechlin himself, and used in the trade with the 
natives. Against this practice the Board entered a solemn 
protest. 163 Whatever blame for the very poor state of the 
Society's finances is placed upon the Board of Managers, 
and it would do violence to the truth to try to relieve them 
of a considerable responsibility for it, that blame must be 
shared also by the colonial agent, for his administration was 
exceedingly unbusinesslike. The Springfield Republican 
probably named the chief causes of the financial difficulty: 

160 Ibid., Feb. 20, 1834. 
«! Ibid., Mar. 6, 1834. 

162 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Confidential, 
Gurley to Gales, Philadelphia, April 1, 1834. 

163 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., July 24, 1834. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 105 

(1) the Liberian merchants, in charging exorbitant profits 
upon stores furnished the colonists, and to an amount far 
beyond the expectation of the Managers, (2) the large emi- 
gration of colonists in 1832, when the Society was already 
beginning to be in debt, (3) the want of practical, business- 
like management and supervision on the part of the Man- 
agers. 164 

As a part of the Board's policy of retrenchment to rid it 
of the debt was the reduction in number of expeditions of 
emigrants to the colony. But this step was opposed by the 
Society's Northern friends, who thought that under no cir- 
cumstances should economy follow that channel. The re- 
sult was that some refused to give, so long as emigrants 
were refused transportation, and that which the Board had 
supposed would result in a saving really resulted in cutting 
off a portion of its revenue. In the annual meeting of 1835, 
the New York delegation made it very plain that they were 
dissatisfied with the business administration of the Mana- 
gers. 165 And yet the funds of the parent Board were being 
still further reduced by the fact that the New York and 
Pennsylvania Societies, in their comparative independence, 
were collecting funds in the Kentucky and Tennessee coun- 
try. It was this that called forth the following remon- 
strance from the Board: 

If, in the opinion of auxiliary societies . . . the Parent Board, 
after a toilsome, gratuitous, and measurably successful service of 
eighteen years resulting in the establishment of a Christian Republic 
on a heathen shore, can now be dispensed with advantageously to 
the cause for which it has made such heavy personal sacrifices, and 
encountered so many obstacles, it would willingly retire from its 
trust . . . ; but ... if the continuance of the Parent Society be 
desirable, its efficiency ought to be unimpaired ; and ... in the 
deliberate judgment of this Board, the separate, independent action 
of auxiliary societies must inevitably lessen the resources of the 
Parent Institution, and its importance in the public eye ; . . . and 
finally make the system itself a victim to multiplied objects and dis- 
connected operations. 166 

From this date until the reorganization of the Society in 



164 Springfield Republican, May 17, 1834. 

165 African Repository, vol. xi, pp. 44-45. 

166 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., May 12, 1836. 



106 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

1839, tne relations between the parent Society and the 
associated Pennsylvania and New York Societies were pe- 
culiarly exasperating to the parent Board. Extraordinary 
bills were presented to it by those societies, on the one hand ; 
and on the other, those societies which had, at the time of 
the agreement on the independent relations that the two 
societies should enjoy, pledged to pay over to the parent 
treasury annually a per cent of their receipts, failed to meet 
their obligations to the parent Board. 167 The result of the 
disagreement was a request by the Pennsylvania Society 
for the reorganization of the Society. 168 The meeting that 
resulted made proposals which were very similar to the 
changes actually made at the annual meeting, in 1839. 

The unusually small revenue of the Society in 1838 is to 
be accounted for not only by the circumstances to which ref- 
erence has been made, but also to the great scarcity of 
money after the panic of 1837. The first speech Clay made, 
as President of the Society, January, 1836 — the preceding 
presidents of the Society having been, with the dates of their 
election: Judge Bushrod Washington, Jan. 1st, 1817; Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton, Jan. 18th, 1830; James Madison, Jan. 
20th, 1833 — set forth clearly the fact that the Society had 
not yet given up hope of aid from the Federal Government, 
and that a further application might be expected in the time 
of the Society's need. 169 

But the most interesting effort to bolster up the financial 
affairs of the Society was an appeal to the people of the 
United States, signed by sixty-six leading men of the coun- 
try, and resulting from a meeting held in May, 1838. 
Among the signers were C. F. Mercer ; Governor Levi Lin- 
coln of Massachusetts ; John H. Prentiss, the editor ; Samuel 
Wilkeson, New York pioneer and one of the founders of 
Buffalo; Charles C. Strattan, later governor of New Jer- 
sey; Ex-Governor Samuel L. Southard, who was at one 

167 Ibid., Apr. 6, 1837; Sept. 28, 1837; Dec. 27, 1837; June 15, 1838; 
Oct. 16, 1838. 

168 Ibid., 1838, passim. 

169 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 17-18; vol. xix, p. 369. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 107 

time Secretary of the Navy, and served in many important 
offices, State and Federal ; James Murry Mason, author of 
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; William C. Rives, United 
States Senator and Minister to France; William Maxwell, 
college president, editor, lawyer, and member of the legisla- 
ture ; Henry Clay, John Pope, of Kentucky, a president pro 
tempore of the United States Senate; Governor and Con- 
gressman John Chambers, of Kentucky ; John J. Crittenden, 
twice attorney-general and a United States Senator ; Elisha 
Whittlesey of Ohio, and Albert S. White, United States 
Senator and railroad president. Of the sixty-six signers, 
thirty-five were from the States north of Virginia, includ- 
ing two from the District of Columbia, and excluding Mary- 
land; twenty-three were from the States, Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, Ohio, and Indiana; and eight were from Virginia, 
North Carolina, and Louisiana. 170 

A fourth difficulty that the Society had to face was the 
condition of affairs in Liberia. Incompetence in the colony 
was not unconnected with incompetence in the Board. If 
the Board had provided sufficient supplies and sent them 
with the emigrants, much of the debt and much of the dis- 
satisfaction in Liberia would never have existed. In June, 
1830, Mechlin, colonial agent, was in the United States and 
reported on conditions in the colony. At that time, he 
urged the Board to make its own purchases of provisions 
and send them out with the colonists. He warned them 
that goods purchased of colonial merchants and paid for 
by drafts on the Society would be at an advance of from 
one hundred to two hundred per cent over the cost of the 
same goods in this country. Agricultural implements were 
needed ; also building tools and nails. 171 Three years later 
he wrote from Liberia repeating his request. Each vessel 
of immigrants should bring also provisions for their sub- 
sistence for six months. 

170 Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 130-135. 

171 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Mechlin to 
Gurley, Washington, June, 1830. 



I08 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

The means at the disposal of the Board will thus be economized, 
and the necessity of such heavy drafts from this quarter be obviated, 
and a fruitful source of murmuring and dissatisfaction be removed. 
. . . The emigrants pr. Brig Roanoke were landed without one ounce 
of provisions or other supplies, in consequence of which I have been 
obliged to purchase of Capt. Hatch. 

The arrival of the large number of emigrants sent out in 
1832, seven hundred and ninety, two hundred and forty- 
seven of whom were manumitted slaves, 172 caused the agent 
much embarrassment on account of inadequate provision 
for receiving them. 173 Some of the expeditions contained 
intelligent and industrious negroes, but these were, as a 
class, free negroes. Mechlin remarked: 

Had we for twelve or eighteen months past received 300 or 400 
people of this description instead of the shoals of emancipated slaves 
who have been landed on our shores, the colony would have pre- 
sented a very different aspect, and instead of the miserably depressed 
state of agriculture we should have had flourishing plantations. . . . 174 

Here was a practical demonstration of the danger of a uni- 
versal and immediate emancipation of all the slaves in the 
United States. Between the crossfire of the Northern Colo- 
nizationists, who demanded that more emigrants be sent out 
and that those who were sent out should be chiefly those 
emancipated for this express purpose, and the colonial gov- 
ernor, who insisted that more provisions should be pur- 
chased and sent with emigrants and that those who were 
sent out should be not too largely of the recent slave class, 
there is no doubt that the problems of the Board were serious 
and pressing, especially as the Southern slaveholders were 
supplying all the slaves the Society could attempt to trans- 
port. The perplexities of the situation will be understood 
when attention is called to the fact that, despite the advice 
of the colonial agent to the Board, Elliot Cresson, who, if 
he was ignored, would have stirred up a hornet's nest from 
Maine to Louisiana in order to gain his point, wrote to the 
Society: "I would beg that if only 227 are slaves, out of 
the 800 sent last year, you will from motives of sound pol- 

172 African Repository, vol. viii, p. 366. 

173 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Mechlin to 
Gurley, Liberia, Feb. 28, 1833. 

"* Ibid. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS IO9 

icy, keep it out of notice " ; and again, " Can you from all 
sources send 2800 this year instead of 800, if funds are 
found?" 175 

Word began to come from Liberia in 1833 that the con- 
dition of the colonists was anything but desirable. Protests 
came to the Managers from Maryland Colonizationists, 176 
and from other interested persons. J. B. Pinney, one of 
the most successful agents the Society ever had, was in Li- 
beria in 1833 and wrote: "At present it is disheartening to 
go among the sick. The constant complaint is ' we have 
no sugar, nor molasses, nor rice,' etc. etc. ' We can get no 
fresh soup, nor chicken.' " Pinney urged the Board to 
send nine months' provisions with each vessel of emigrants. 
Many of the houses, too, were leaky, he said, and many 
houses were not ready for occupancy, though they were 
badly needed. A great deal of the distress, he thought, was 
due to the selection of an incompetent agent, and one who 
lacked religion, interest and energy. 177 Very unsatisfactory 
accounts came also from a number of the colonists. 178 Gur- 
ley himself admitted the distress in the colony, and thought 
it was due in considerable measure to the incompetency of 
the agent. 179 In a word, this was the darkest hour in the 
history of the colony. Its darkness was rendered all the 
more prominent by the fact that it followed a period of 
great promise in Liberia. Reports had been coming in of 
the prosperity of the colonists, and it was believed the time 
had come when the operations of the Society could with 
safety be greatly enlarged. 180 

175 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Glasgow, Scotland, Mar. 15, 1833. 

176 Ibid., C. C. Harper to Gurley, Baltimore, Apr. 13, 1833 ; Wm. 
L. Stone to Gurley, New York, Mar. 19, 1833; C. C. Harper to 
Gurley, Baltimore, Apr. 24, 1833 ; Miss Christian Blackburn to Gur- 
ley, Clay Mont, Va., May 22, 1833. 

177 Ibid., J. B. Pinney to Gurley, Liberia, May 17, 1833. 

178 Ibid., Phillip Moore to Gurley, Liberia, May 10, 1833; July 27, 
1833 ; Remus Harvey to Gurley, Liberia, July 30, 1833 ; H. Teage to 
Gurley, Liberia, July 30, 1833. 

179 Ibid., Gurley to Fendall, New York, Oct. 4, 1833 ; Gurley to 
Gales, New York, April 17, 1834. 

180 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 



IIO THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

It would be unjust to accuse the Board of Managers of a 
wilful neglect of the Colony. The minutes of that Board 
bear convincing testimony to the sincerity and philanthropy 
of those who controlled the Society. There is no doubt 
that the distress of the colonists weighed heavily upon those 
Managers. If, then, it be asked what was the cause of it 
all, the answer must be that there were a number of con- 
tributing causes. The following are suggested as the most 
important: (i) the lack of experienced, practical, business 
men in the membership of the Board, (2) the incompetency, 
if not the sheer negligence, of the colonial agent, (3) the 
insistence of Northern Colonizationists upon a too vigor- 
ous colonizing policy, when viewed in connection with the 
preparations in Liberia for receiving immigrants, (4) the 
importation of too large a proportion of slaves among the 
colonists and (5) the financial embarrassments of the So- 
ciety. Finally, among the problems of which it seems im- 
portant to speak at this stage of our inquiry, is the move- 
ment toward and the accomplishment of the reorganization 
of the Society. 

The American Colonization Society was reorganized un- 
doubtedly through the initiative of the Philadelphia and 
New York Societies. Among those who urged such a 
change, Elliot Cresson was the leader. Of Cresson, Isaac 
Orr, an agent of the parent Society, wrote in 1830 he " has 
the patronage of Philadelphia under his thumb, to a greater 
extent that I dare tell him. . . . And woe to the day when 
that commanding influence shall in any way be broken or 
thrown aside." 181 From 1830 until the reorganization had 
been consummated, this belligerent Friend lost no oppor- 
tunity to tell the Board, in the most direct terms, what he 
thought of them. He wrote Gurley in August, 1830: 
"must I believe that there is something in the atmosphere 
of your City militating against the performance of business 

ciety, MS., Nov. 22, 1830 ; Feb. 28, 1831; Letters of American Coloni- 
zation Society, MS., Wm. A. Weaver to Gurley, Washington, Dec. 
28, 1831. 

181 Ibid., Orr to Gurley, Philadelphia, July 15, 1830. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS III 

according to universal usage elsewhere ? " The uncertainty 
of the Board's plans for sending out a proposed expedition 
of emancipated slaves, which, at the Board's request, he 
had put himself to considerable inconvenience to arrange 
for, called forth from him the following remark: "Your 
Board give me leave to write to McPhail. What am I to 
write about? I can form no guess of their intentions. . . . 
You must select your own vessel and relieve me from 
further anxiety and chagrin. Another such would bring 
on a nervous fever judging from what I have already suf- 
fered." In the form of a confidential postscript, he adds: 
" By the way what a perverse set you are at Washington. 
. . ." 183 Again he wrote : " So little does your honorable 
and reverend Board seem to think it worth while to concil- 
iate the confidence and kindly feelings of your patrons . . . 
that I almost despair of ever getting a satisfactory answer 
to any subject that I may trouble you with." 183 Again, he 
writes: 

I now demand your ultimatum, promptly; or I forever wash my 
hands of the concern. You pledged yourselves to send ioo on the 
nth October. Do you, I ask, intend to redeem that pledge? If so, 
there is no time to be lost. If not, I will take the advice of my 
physician, go in the country and leave you to get a vessel when it 
suits you. . . . Don't forget the sawmill. It is of first importance. 
The plantation ground ditto. Schools ditto. 18 * 

In 1833 Cresson was in England and Scotland for the 
purpose of arousing an interest in favor of Colonization 
and of undoing the influence of the Garrisonians, who were 
there painting in the very darkest colors the motives of 
American Colonizationists. Of this Abolition influence in 
the British Isles he writes : " . . . unless you mean to aban- 
don England ingloriously to these modern Vandals you 
must turn over a new leaf. ... It is only by laborious 
search, that I occasionally light upon a straw to keep me 
from sinking." 185 Upon his return, he refers to Gurley as 
"that paragon," for having as Cresson says, "denounced 

182 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Aug. 5, 1830. 

183 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Sept. 6, 1830. 

184 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Sept. 10, 1830. 

185 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Glasgow, Mar. 15, 1833. 



112 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

me for making complaint, after I had in vain implored him 
to do the cause and myself justice before the British public 
year after year." 186 But Gurley was so accustomed to 
Cresson's hyperboles that, as he commented: "I have be- 
come somewhat hardened against them." 

As Cresson was busy in the North Middle States work- 
ing up sentiment in opposition to the existing organization, 
so Robert S. Finley was, in the Western country, exerting 
a similar, though markedly less powerful influence. Sum- 
ming up the objections met with against the methods of the 
Board, he names them as follows: (i) a want of system 
and energy in the Board in the execution of its plans, (2) 
failure to send out expeditions at the time at which they 
were advertised to sail, (3) failure to establish, in Liberia, 
a settlement on the higher and more healthful territory, (4) 
failure, on the part of the officers of the Society, to reply 
to important communications from contributors, slavehold- 
ers offering slaves, persons asking for advice and informa- 
tion, and so on. 187 

The testimony of these two men contains an important 
element of truth, but both undoubtedly went much too far 
in their charges against the Managers. So far as they 
charged business incompetency, they did an important 
service in pointing out the need of reform ; so far as they 
charged dishonesty and impure motives, their charges fall 
completely to the ground. Not many men realized the 
heavy burden that rested upon the secretary of the Society. 
A man, who, like Gurley, was admirably and primarily fitted 
to keep the sections together and inspire in men of every 
part of the Union an interest in the cause, was not likely to 
be possessed of those qualities which make an admirable 
office secretary, such a man, for instance, as Judge Samuel 
Wilkeson, who was soon to give new life to the affairs of 
the organization. Gurley was contemplative rather than 

186 Ibid., Cresson to Gales, Philadelphia, May 4, 1835. 

187 Ibid., Finley to Gurley, Ohio River, Sept. 11, 1831 ; W. Meade 
to Gurley, December 6, 1831. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS I I 3 

energetic ; a thinker rather than an actor. It was his duty 
to keep up, both through the press, through the agencies, 
and by his own personal visitations to various parts of the 
country, an active interest in the subject of Colonization ; 
to superintend, from New Orleans to Maine, the collection 
of funds, the preparation of expeditions, their provisioning, 
and the collecting of emigrants ; the general supervision 
over the administration of the colonial agent in Liberia, and 
the impartial and judicious treatment of so dependent a 
class as those received into the colony — all this, and a gen- 
eral supervision of the government of a colony four thou- 
sand miles from home, a colony from which much was 
hoped, both for America and for Africa. 

All this had to be done, and the Society that attempted it 
was supported by no endowment, no financial aid from the 
government, except some very inadequate aid from several 
of the State legislatures. And the Society was not even 
incorporated until nearly the end of the period of which we 
here speak. In these days of duplicators, typewriters, 
stenographers, fast mail trains, and a highly developed pos- 
tal system, we probably do not appreciate the burdens that 
a man of such position as that occupied by Gurley had to 
bear. The task of the Abolitionists was to agitate the sub- 
ject of slavery in the States north of Mason and Dixon's 
line. The task of the Colonizationist was to conciliate the 
North and the South, to agitate the peaceable and gradual 
abolition of slavery and the transportation of the blacks to 
Africa, and to found on that continent a republic where 
freedom could be actually experienced and which would be 
a model for the rest of Africa. 

Reorganization was being talked of as early as 1834. In 
that year Leonard Bacon of New Haven, Connecticut, sug- 
gested that the active management of the Society be placed 
in the hands of five or seven men and, to prevent the possi- 
bility of their using unwisely their power, that they be made 
subject to a supervisory body. Reports should be made at 
each annual meeting, and at these meetings representation 
8 



114 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

of auxiliary societies should be in proportion to the amount 
of funds contributed to the parent treasury. 188 Dissatis- 
faction was further evidenced, at the annual meeting in 
1835, when a delegate from the New York Society made an 
effort to secure the election on the Board of Managers of 
four additional men, two of them aggressive members of the 
Pennsylvania Society, and by an effort by the same member 
to secure the passage of resolutions calling on the Board of 
Managers to reduce their office expenditures. These efforts 
failed. 189 

Whatever accusations are made concerning the distribu- 
tion of seats on the Board of Managers, the only body, prior 
to 1839, which had an active part in shaping the policies of 
the Society, there can be no complaint made on the score 
that the selection of those officers was in the hands of the 
South after 1836, and it appears there is no evidence that at 
any time since its organization in 181 7 it pursued a pro- 
slavery policy. In 1836 the members of the committee 
which at the annual meeting nominated the Managers was 
composed of two delegates from New York, two from Vir- 
ginia, and one from Ohio. 190 For 1837, all five members of 
the nominating committee were from the Middle and West- 
ern States, not a Southern State being represented on the 
committee, 191 although the appointments were made by the 
chairman, C. F. Mercer, of Virginia. The Managers elected 
for 1837 were reelected for 1838. 192 

From 1837 t0 the ti me when the reorganization of the 
parent Society was effected, the New York and Philadel* 
phia Societies pursued a policy calculated either to kill the 
older organization or to force it to submit. It must not be 
forgotten that of all the societies in the United States, these 
two were able to command the largest financial resources. 
They were powerful enough to secede from the parent So- 

188 Ibid., Bacon to Gurley, New Haven, Conn., Jan. 3, 1834. 

189 African Repository, vol. ii, pp. 49-50. 

190 Ibid., vol. xii, p. 12. 

191 Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 35. 

192 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 29. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS I I 5 

ciety and, in cooperation with New England, establish an 
organization that would undoubtedly have alienated the 
South immediately from the whole scheme, and it must be 
repeated that the orthodox Colonizationist was never a sec- 
tionalism never a disunionist. Between 1837 and 1839 these 
two societies jointly presented bills for the payment of 
which the parent Society was in no sense obligated to them, 
and failed to redeem pledges made by them to the parent 
Society for the payment of a percentage of their collections 
in New York and Pennsylvania. 195 After the reorganiza- 
tion was effected, a referee, himself a citizen of New York, 
decided every material point favorably to the parent So- 
ciety. 194 

In 1837 an effort was made among the New York, Penn- 
sylvania, and Maryland Societies to agree upon a " Consti- 
tution of General Government for the American Settle- 
ments on the Western Coast of Africa." The proposed 
plan was accepted by the New York and Pennsylvania So- 
cieties but rejected by that of Maryland. It was then pro- 
posed that the three organizations send delegates to Phila- 
delphia for the purpose of effecting a union among them- 
selves. This the Maryland Society refused to do. Instead, 
it was agreed to send to the Washington Society's office an 
" Outline of a new Constitution for the American Coloniza- 
tion Society," which should replace the constitution then in 
force. The parent Society was requested to send copies of 
the proposed changes to the several auxiliaries, to be con- 
sidered by them and voted upon at the annual meeting at 
the end of 1838. 195 By the terms of this proposed consti- 
tution, the Board of Managers was to be replaced by (1) 
a Board of Directors, and (2) an Executive Committee. 
By the old constitution, the Managers had been chosen at 

193 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., April 6, 1837; Sept. 28, 1837; June 15, 1838; October 16, 
1838. 

194 Minutes of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., vol. iii, pp. 410-422; African Repository, vol. xv, p. 19 ff. 

195 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 287-289. 



Il6 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the annual meeting by a vote of all members who were in 
attendance. By the proposed constitution, the Society was 
to be composed, not of individuals as units, but of State 
societies as units. The Board of Directors was to be a body 
composed of delegates chosen by the State societies; each 
such society contributing not less than one thousand dollars 
to the parent treasury to be entitled to one delegate, or 
member of the Board of Directors. Each such society 
having under its care a colony was to be entitled to two 
members of the Board; any two or more such societies 
uniting in the support of a colony, comprising at least three 
hundred persons, were to be entitled to two members, each, 
on the Board. 

By the proposed plan, the Board of Directors was to meet 
annually, when they were to appoint an executive commit- 
tee, with such paid officers (ex-officio members of the ex- 
ecutive committee) as was deemed wise. The executive 
committee was thus a sort of subcommittee of the Board 
and was subject to its supervision and authority. By the 
proposed plan, each auxiliary society was to be allowed to 
send as many as five delegates to each annual meeting of 
the Society. 196 

In the meantime there had been a correspondence among 
leading Colonizationists in reference to the wisdom of mak- 
ing so radical a change as it was proposed to make. Thomas 
Buchanan, later Colonial Governor of Liberia and already 
a leading member of the Pennsylvania Society, thought that 
the change should be entire, in so far as the relations be- 
tween the several auxiliary societies to the parent organi- 
zation was concerned. " I would have a general Board of 
Delegates from all the State Societies which were willing to 
unite for that purpose, with powers of legislation for the 
Colony, the appointment of officers, etc. But without the 
power of sending out emigrants which should be reserved 
to the State societies." He favored the establishment, in 
Philadelphia or New York, of an executive committee. He 

196 Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 287-289. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 117 

thought the societies that had established independent colo- 
nies in Africa should surrender their jurisdiction to a com- 
mon government organized by the parent organization. 197 

Elisha Whittlesey, of Ohio, thought that there were 
changes needed in the organization, " but," said he, " I think 
we should correct, and not annihilate." Of the proposed 
board, composed of representatives from the State societies, 
to have supervision over the colonies in Africa, he thought : 
" Such a Board would never form, or if at all, not more 
than once, or twice. You could not obtain delegates from 
Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky who would meet here 
or at the East, to attend to the concerns of the Society." It 
had been proposed also to put the control of the finances of 
the Society in the hands of the New York and Pennsyl- 
vania societies. Whittlesey's comment was : " Such a step 
would cut you off from the South at once. We want to in- 
spire more confidence in the South, instead of lessening that 
which we have." As to the location of the central office, 
for there was a movement to make Philadelphia or New 
York the central office, he thought it should be located " at 
the seat of the General Government, on common, neutral 
ground. Here the Managers are easily collected together, 
and they better understand how to harmonize the discordant 
elements at the North and at the South than those who re- 
side elsewhere. The New York and the Pennsylvania So- 
ciety must not leave us either. Whatever is wrong must 
be corrected, and then we must have more zeal and en- 
ergy." 198 

The views of Gurley were very similar to those of Whit- 
tlesey. He called attention to the fact that the movement 
for reorganization was distinctly a movement of the Penn- 
sylvania and New York Societies; that whatever criticism 
they made of the administration of affairs by the Board of 
Managers came with poor grace from the very societies 

197 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Thomas Buch- 
anan to Samuel VVilkeson, Philadelphia, May 10, 1838. 

198 Ibid., Whittlesey to Wilkeson, Washington, June 3, 1838. 



I 1 8 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

which had sanctioned those elections; that the energy of 
the parent organization had been impaired by the refusal of 
these two societies, the most able to contribute, to redeem 
their pledges; that the Managers, far from profiting by 
their connection with the Board, had often assumed volun- 
tarily the responsibility for large amounts which, had they 
been called on to make good, would have weighed heavily 
upon them. He favored an early settlement of the rela- 
tions between the auxiliary and the parent societies, but 
thought that the central office should, by all means, remain 
at the national capital. "To destroy the parent Board," 
said he, "is, in my judgment, to ruin the cause at the 
South." 189 Joseph Gales, a North Carolinian by birth, who 
since 1834 had been the treasurer of the parent Society, put 
the blame for a considerable part of the financial distress 
of the Society directly upon the New York and Pennsyl- 
vania societies, through their refusal to meet the pledges 
made by them at the time of the agreement by which they 
pursued an independent policy. And this, he thought, was 
the chief cause of the widespread criticism among the So- 
ciety's friends. 200 

During this discussion of the changes desirable in the 
parent society, Judge Samuel Wilkeson of Buffalo, New 
York, and one who may, with considerable justice, be called 
the father of Buffalo, was invited by the Board of Mana- 
gers to become general agent for the Society, with power to 
commission, instruct, or remove agents, as he thought nec- 
essary. To him was committed also the supervision of the 
finances. In short, he was made practically dictator of the 
Society's affairs in the United States. 201 Wilkeson accepted 
the task, magnanimously refusing compensation until the 
Society should be free from debt. 202 He threw himself into 



199 Ibid., Gurley to Wilkeson, Washington, June 4, 1838. 

200 Ibid., Gales to Wilkeson, Washington, Aug. 4, 1838. 

201 African Repository, vol. xv, pp. 6-7; Minutes of Board of 
Managers of American Colonization Society, MS., Dec, 1838. 

202 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Wilkeson to 
Gurley, New York, July 7, 1838. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS II9 

the work with an energy uncommon among men but char- 
acteristic of himself. Possessed of none of the suavity with 
which Gurley made friends wherever he went, inclined to 
underestimate the inspirational side of a movement based 
upon public opinion, he lived in Western New York, made 
money, got things done, was a chief among pioneers, and 
suffered from the gout. 

Hardly had Wilkeson begun his duties in the Coloniza- 
tion cause, when Cresson began to complain about the need 
for reform. " I hope," wrote he, " you will dismiss the 
idlers at Washington next month and give the friends of 
the cause new hopes thereby that the mice in the treasury 
will not eat up all the meal." 203 Here, as elsewhere, there 
was an element of value in Cresson's criticism, but it was 
far overstated. The Board might probably have done well 
to have dispensed with the services of one or two of its office 
force, after the cause came under such formidable discour- 
agement, but Wilkeson himself found that the public had 
been misled in its belief that much further economy was 
practicable. 204 The new general agent went to work with 
a will, however, and reported to the Managers in December, 
1838: 

I have found it very difficult to obtain such agents as are re- 
quired. ... In some sections of the country the hostility of aboli- 
tionists is dreaded. The cause of colonization has been so long 
neglected, that the societies heretofore organized have everywhere 
been suffered to die, and many men formerly warm colonizationists 
. . . are unwilling to encounter the difficulties now presented. Very 
many believe that the low state to which colonization [has come] is 
owing to the impracticability of carrying it on by private charity. 
. . . Very many others . . . believe that some radical change in 
the organization and management ... is necessary to its success. 
Even in those sections . . . which have been abandoned to the aboli- 
tionists ... I have found that a large proportion of the people are 
glad to hear once more of colonization and hail it as a great con- 
servative principle that will save our country, and elevate the colored 
man. 205 

At the annual meeting in January, 1839, the interest was 

203 Ibid., Cresson to Wilkeson, Woodstock, Vermont, Nov. 28, 1838. 

204 Ibid., Wilkeson to Gales, New York, Nov. 16, 1838; Nov. 30, 
1838; Gales to Wilkeson, Washington, Nov. 28, 1838. 

205 Letters of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Dec. 10, 1838. 



120 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

intense. The New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania 
Societies sent delegations that numerically reached the 
maximum allowed by the rules. Besides, Virginia had a 
full and able delegation, her representatives being C. F. 
Mercer, Wm. C. Rives, James Garland, Henry A. Wise, and 
Abel P. Upshur. Of the total number of delegates, thirty- 
one, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania sent seven- 
teen, Virginia six, and the West four, the District of Co- 
lumbia sending four. 206 The reason for the full delegations 
is obvious. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had 
come to bring about radical changes in the organization. 
These changes undoubtedly constitute the first official rec- 
ognition, of consequence, of one section as opposed to an- 
other, in the constitution of the Society. They constitute 
the first step made by Colonizationists in the estrangement 
of the upper South and the Southwestern States. That 
some changes were needful for the very life of the Society 
is obvious. That those changes took the direction they did 
is altogether regrettable. 

In the first discussion, at the annual meeting, there was 
no agreement between the delegates from the North Middle 
States and the Virginians. A committee, composed of two 
Southerners and four from New York and Pennsylvania, 
reported a compromise, in which the Virginians took what 
they could get, and it was adopted by the representatives 
and became, in name, the amended, but in fact, the new 
constitution. The changes adopted were not so radical as 
those recommended by the Maryland, Pennsylvania, and 
New York societies in 1837, but they were quite radical 
enough. 207 The name and the object of the Society were, 
in the revised instrument, stated to be the same as in the 
old; but that was about all. It may be well to compare it 
with the original constitution, on the one hand, and with the 
proposed one, on the other. 

(1) The name and professed object of the Society re- 
main the same in all three. 

206 African Repository, vol. xv, p. 19 ff. 

207 See above. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 121 

(2) By the old constitution, the parent Society was a 
society composed of individuals; by the proposed consti- 
tution it was to be a federation of auxiliary societies ; by the 
instrument actually adopted it was to partake of the nature 
of both. Every citizen of the United States who paid an- 
nually as much as one dollar into the treasury was to be 
considered a member; but membership on its Board of 
Directors, the actual governing power of the Society, was 
confined to societies contributing certain fixed amounts. 
Every society contributing not less than $1000 was entitled 
to two directors of the Board ; every society having under 
its care a colony was entitled to three delegates ; every two 
or more societies jointly maintaining a colony of not fewer 
than three hundred settlers, was entitled to three delegates. 
Any individual contributing as much as $1000 to the parent 
treasury was entitled to membership for life on the Board 
of Directors. 

(3) By the old constitution, the Society was to meet an- 
nually ; by the proposed instrument, the Board of Directors 
was to meet annually ; by that adopted, both the Society and 
the Board of Directors were to meet annually. 

(4) By both the proposed and the new constitutions, any 
State Colonization Society maintaining a colony in Liberia 
was given the right to appropriate its funds to the mainte- 
nance of such colony. 

(5) By the new instrument, all sums paid into the treas- 
ury of the parent Society were, after the payment of ex- 
penses for collecting and after paying a certain portion of 
the existing debt, to be applied to the benefit of the colony 
of Monrovia, where the Colonial Governor was to reside. 208 

To understand how radical was this change, and how 
completely it deprived the South of even a respectable voice 
in the management of an enterprise in which it was asked 
and urged to make continued and important contributions, 
it is sufficient to call attention to the fact that the very first 
Board of Directors, after the adoption of the new consti- 

208 African Repository, vol. xv, p. 19 fr. 



122 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

tution, was composed of eight members from the States 
north of Maryland, two from those south of the District of 
Columbia, two from the District of Columbia, and two from 
Ohio. 209 A whole section, itself the very center of opera- 
tions of the Society, deprived of any effective representa- 
tion in its proceedings, could not be expected to continue to 
exhibit an active interest. Indeed, when one takes into 
consideration the sectional bitterness of the time, it is re- 
markable how long some of the Southern States did lend 
their support to the movement that was now in northern 
hands. For years Virginia, Mississippi and Louisiana did 
important service for the Society. But from 1839 there is 
evident a new spirit, a spirit that must not be attributed 
altogether to the rise of cotton production but also to the 
loss of a hearing in the councils of Colonization. 

But it may be asked, why did not the Southern States 
pay into the treasury enough to entitle them to an equal 
representation with the Middle States? Simply because of 
the two facts : ( 1 ) the South was not able to make contri- 
butions equal to those of the more prosperous section, and 
(2) no matter how many slaves a Southern slaveholder 
gave away for emigration to Africa, the South was not 
thereby given credit for a single dollar in its representa- 
tion among the directors. The reorganizers of the Society 
committed a capital blunder in ignoring this important fact. 
And then there was that other consideration, to which Whit- 
tlesey had already called attention. New York and Penn- 
sylvania and, for that matter, all New England, were so 
much nearer the seat of the Society than were the Southern 
States that where members of the Board of Directors came 
from the States they represented the North would invaria- 
bly outnumber the South in the number of those in attend- 
ance. It is sufficient here to say that the estrangement of 
the South was not due altogether to economic changes in 
that section. The South, at least a part of it, began to lose 
interest in the American Colonization Society before it be- 

209 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 27. 



ORGANIZATION, PURPOSE, EARLY YEARS 123 

gan to lose interest in the cause of colonization. By 1840 
both Louisiana and Mississippi were seriously contemplat- 
ing action independent of the American Colonization So- 
ciety, and the basis of their position was that good faith to 
the South required it. 210 By 1843 McLain, Secretary of 
the parent Society, wrote : 

More than half the South look upon us as a co. of abolitionists 
only called by another name. 211 And by April, 1852, Alabama had 
organized a Colonization Society entirely independent of the Ameri- 
can Colonization Society, and because there was in the minds of 
many an impression that the Am. Col. Society partook too much of 
the abolition spirit to receive their countenance and support. 212 

Since 1830 there had arisen a great need for the incor- 
poration of the Society. Several bequests had been lost, 
and some had not been made, because of the fact that the 
Society was not a corporate body. After one or two efforts 
to secure a charter of incorporation from Congress, all of 
which ended in failure, General Walter Jones declaring that 
a debate in Congress over the charter of the Society would 
have divided and agitated that body more than would the 
proposal to recharter the United States Bank, 213 the Mary- 
land legislature granted it a charter in 1831. 214 This was 
not altogether satisfactory. During 1837 Clay made two 
efforts to secure in Congress a more satisfactory charter, 
but again it was refused. Finally, the Maryland legisla- 
ture, in 1837, granted the amended charter. 215 

A word more as to the finances of the Society. Of those 
who, in 1838, were contributors on the plan of Gerrit 
Smith, that is, who subscribed one hundred dollars per year 
for a period of ten years, two were from Maine, one from 
Vermont, two from Massachusetts, one from Connecticut, 
one from Rhode Island, five from New York, two from 

210 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., F. Knight to 
Wilkeson, Aug. 1, 1840, No. 704. 

211 Ibid., McLain to Dodge, Feb. 27, 1843, No. 720- 

212 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization 
Society, MS., Apr. 16, 1852. 

213 The Liberator, Feb. 15, 1834. 

214 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Feb. 15, 1837- 

21 s Ibid., Mar. 30, 1837. 



124 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

New Jersey, four from Pennsylvania, one from Delaware; 
sixteen from Virginia, one from South Carolina, four from 
Mississippi, seven from Louisiana, three from Maryland, 
two from the District of Columbia, and one from Ohio. 216 
The total expenditures of the Society to November 13, 1838, 
were $379,644.1 5. 217 By 1839 the total debt of the Society 
was estimated by Wilkeson at approximately $70,ooo. 218 

It was not a bright day for colonization, in December, 
1838; with a heavy debt, hardly an agent actively engaged 
in the work, a difference of opinion between the northern 
and southern branches of the Society as to the best means 
of giving it efficiency, and a North and West that had been 
invaded and, if not conquered, at least dumfounded by the 
accusations of the Abolitionists. This was enough, but this 
was not all. When the New York delegates went back to 
report they found that Society unwilling to ratify their 
agreement to the amended constitution. Wilkeson, who 
labored earnestly for the cooperation of the Pennsylvania 
and New York Societies wrote, in May, 1839: "A negotia- 
tion between the Emperor of Russia and the States of Hol- 
land in the sixteenth century could not be more diplomati- 
cally ceremonious than that between your two societies." 218 
Difficulties were real when a man of his indomitable will 
admitted, " I confess I feel discouraged. . . . Can there be 
any organization that will unite all friends of the cause in 
support of the Am. Col. Society? If not, the friends of the 
cause ought to know it." 220 But there were brighter days 
ahead. 

216 African Repository, vol. xiv, back cover. 

217 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gales to Wilke- 
son, Washington, Nov. 14, 1838. 

218 Ibid., Wilkeson to Ker, Washington, July 25, 1840. No. 680. 

219 Ibid., Wilkeson to Rev. Hope, May 9, 1839. 

220 Ibid., Mar. 28, 1840, no. 119. 



CHAPTER III 

American Colonization and Garrisonian Abolition. 

The bitterest opposition Colonization ever encountered 
came from the Abolitionists of William Lloyd Garrison's 
school. Next to these, its fiercest enemies were the slave- 
holders of the Southeastern States. One who turns the 
pages of Garrison's Liberator for the years 1831 to 1835, 
will be struck by the fact that in some issues more space was 
given to tearing down the influence of the Colonization So- 
ciety than was used in direct opposition to the institution 
of slavery. Henry Clay told the truth when, in 1838, he 
said : " The roads of Colonization and Abolition lead in dif- 
ferent directions, but they do not cross each other," 1 but 
no more hostile denunciation was ever used in depicting the 
crimes of slaveholders than was used in characterizing the 
Colonizationist leaders. This is all the more surprising 
when the fact is known, and it is a fact, that those very 
Colonizationists with whom Garrison came in contact were 
as truly opposed to slavery as Garrison himself. Elijah 
Paine, one of the foremost citizens of Vermont and for 
years President of the State Colonization Society, was as 
earnest an advocate of emancipation as any Abolitionist in 
the North, 2 but The Liberator made no distinctions. 

In the struggle for supremacy the Garrisonians took the 
offensive. The opposition began with them and continued 
until Colonization journals refused longer to take notice of 
Abolition speeches or articles. 8 Between 183 1 and 1840 
the opposition often took the form of direct meetings in 

1 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 17-18. 

2 Ibid., vol. xv, pp. 44-48. 

8 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., W. McLain to 
Hon. Edw. Storrs, December 30, 1841, No. 494; McLain to Samuel 
Elliott, vol. iv, No. 1425. 

125 



126 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

debate. 4 Frequently after the debate a vote would be taken 
to ascertain the sentiments of the audience. When, in 1835, 
Gurley made a tour of New England, there was no dearth 
of challengers among the Garrisonians. At Boston he 
chanced into a session of one of their conventions and had 
hardly taken his seat when a Garrisonian leader arose and 
moved a resolution declaring the principles of the American 
Colonization Society to be "unrighteous, unnatural, pro- 
scriptive, and the attempt to give permanency to the insti- 
tution [of slavery], a fraud on the credulity and an outrage 
on the intelligence of the public," and challenging any per- 
son present to defend the Society. Gurley arose, and the 
result was a two days' debate. 5 Proceeding to Concord, 
New Hampshire, he found another convention in session, 
and here also he was drawn into a discussion which ended 
quite favorably to Colonization, if we are to judge by the 
subscriptions received from prominent men of the State at 
a meeting held a day or two later in the same city and re- 
sulting from the debate. Among the subscribers were the 
governor, an ex-governor, Judge Upham, and many mem- 
bers of the legislature. 6 These are but illustrations of what 
was going on throughout the North and West between Colo- 
nization agents and radical Abolitionists. 

It must not be forgotten that there were two distinct 
classes of Abolitionists: (1) moderates and, (2) Garriso- 
nians. This classification was well known in the North, 
and the distinction is so important for our present pur- 
poses, for reference in this chapter is made almost wholly 
to the Garrisonians, that attention is here called to it. It 
will be profitable to consider briefly an important point in 

4 African Repository, vol. ix, p. 218; vol. x, pp. 125-126; Letters 
of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Fendall, Boston, 
June 1, 1835. 

5 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Fen- 
dall, Boston, June 1, 1835; Minutes of Board of Managers of Ameri- 
can Colonization Society, MS., vol. iii, p. 190 ff. 

6 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., vol. iii, p. 193. Letters of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Gurley to Fendall, Boston, June 11, 1835. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 127 

connection with the origin of the Garrisonian group and of 
the Colonizationists. 

Garrison founded his group upon a sectional sentiment; 
Colonization was founded upon a national sentiment. Gar- 
rison's sowing was of the wind and, as we shall come to see 
hereafter, his reaping was of the whirlwind. Colonization- 
ists have been accused of many unworthy motives, but 
never yet have they been accused of ever having sown a 
seed of disunion and civil strife. It was born out of a de- 
sire to unite the North and the South in the settlement of 
the negro problem. Garrison was determined to free the 
slaves at once, whether or not the result was the disruption 
of the Union; Colonizationists were determined to forego 
immediate emancipation, for the sake of accomplishing both 
ultimate emancipation and the preservation of the Union. 
This is the very heart of the distinction between the creeds 
of Garrisonians and Colonizationists. As to ulterior aims 
and motives, in the origins and progress of the two organi- 
zations, the paramount aim of Garrison has been univer- 
sally admitted to be the immediate and unconditional eman- 
cipation of all the slaves in the United States. The sincerity 
of his aims has never been seriously questioned. Unfor- 
tunately, and thanks to the vituperation of the Garrisonians 
themselves, the motives of the Colonizationists have been 
widely misrepresented since 183 1. It is the purpose of this 
study to set forth the true aims of orthodox Colonization- 
ists, or, from another point of view, to demonstrate that 
their aims were as sincerely expressed as sound policy would 
admit, and that, where motives were concealed, they were 
concealed in order to retain the good will of the slaveholder 
in order to secure the freedom of his slaves. 

However, it is desired here chiefly to set forth and com- 
pare the methods used by the Garrisonians and the members 
of the American Colonization Society in their relations with 
each other and with the Southern slaveholders, and to set 
forth also the results of the methods pursued by each. 

A favorite method employed by Garrison to prejudice the 



128 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

North against the Colonization movement was to take 
speeches made by Clay, or articles written by Gurley and 
others and, by a process of garbling, create in the minds of 
readers of the Abolitionist newspapers an entirely erroneous 
view of the attitude of Colonizationists toward the whole 
subject of slavery. The Colonizationists desired to appeal 
to all sections of the Union. They, therefore, were careful 
not to alienate the sympathies of slaveholders. An impor- 
tant fact which Garrison either failed to appreciate or con- 
sistently ignored was that the Colonization Society desired 
far more earnestly to abolish slavery than it expressed in 
its official journal. It would have been much more difficult 
for him to make a plausible garbled account of its attitude, 
as expressed in all its official records and private corre- 
spondence — and only here could be found expressed its true 
attitude on that question — than to compile such an account 
from the African Repository. 7 A striking example of the 
method employed is contained in Garrison's Thoughts on 
African Colonization, page 149. In an effort to prove Dr. 
Caldwell, one of the most active founders of the Coloni- 
zation Society, a proponent of slavery, Garrison offers the 
following quotation : 

The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you 
cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them in their 
present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges 
which they can never attain, and turn what you intend for a blessing 
into a curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, 
keep them in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation. The 
nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance 
do you give them of possessing their apathy. 

It is true that Dr. Caldwell made the remark as quoted ; 
but he followed it immediately, and as the expression of his 
own view, with the following sentiment, which Garrison 
omitted from his quotation: 

Surely Americans ought to be the last people on earth to advo- 
cate such slavish doctrines,— to cry, peace and contentment to those 



7 For an example of Garrison's method, see both The Liberator 
for December 8, 1832, pp. 193-104, and African Repository, January, 
1833, pp. 346-347. See also African Repository, first article, March, 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 20, 

who are deprived of the blessings of civil liberty. Those who have 
so largely partaken of its blessings — who know so well how to esti- 
mate its value, ought to be foremost to extend it to others. 

When Garrison was called to account for this utter per- 
version of the views of Dr. Caldwell, he admitted he had 
not read Dr. Caldwell's remarks, but, at the same time, 
when he should have been content with doing Caldwell, 
already in his grave, the justice of a frank confession of his 
own serious blunder, he made an effort to prove by other 
extracts and quotations, that he had, after all, not done that 
leader injustice in an estimate of his views. In the latter 
attempt he ingloriously failed. 8 As a matter of fact, both 
Francis Scott Key and Caldwell had been active in securing 
the liberty of negroes in the District of Columbia taken 
illegally into slavery. 9 

A method similar to the above, employed by The Libera- 
tor, was that of publishing as evidence of the proslavery 
sentiment in the Colonization Society, divided votes at an- 
nual meetings, although these votes were expressions of 
policy alone, and were in no true sense an expression of the 
views of the organization upon the subject of slavery. 10 In 
a number of instances, accusations made had no foundation 
whatever in fact. 11 Garrison himself, while on a tour of 
England in advocacy of his cause, stated that the American 
Colonization Society 

originated with those who held a large portion of their fellow- 
creatures in worse than Egyptian bondage; that it was generally 
supported by them ; and that it was under their entire control — that 
not one of its officers and managers had emancipated his slaves, and 
sent them to Liberia . . . that it maintained that no slave ought to 
receive his liberty, except on condition of instant banishment from 
the country. . . . 

It was "the apologist and friend of American slavehold- 
ers." 12 These accusations are so sweeping in their scope 

8 The Liberator, Nov. 2, 1833; Jesse Torrey, A Portraiture of 
Domestic Slavery in the United States, pp. 86-87, Philadelphia, 1817. 

9 Torrey, pp. 49~52. 

10 The Liberator, March 2, 1833; April 6, 1833; Sept. 21, 1833. 

11 African Repository, vol. ix, pp. 201-203 ; United States Tele- 
graph, July 24, 1833. 

12 The Liberator, October 19, 1833. 



I3O THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

that a refutation of them here would require needless repe- 
tition. But if the positions taken in this study have been 
successfully maintained, the motives of Colonizationists 
were utterly misstated by Garrison. 

The columns of The Liberator were at times self-contra- 
dictory. For instance, the issue for September 21, 1833, 
contained a reprint which required for insertion the whole 
of the first and part of the second page; it was an account 
of the maltreatment of the Northerner, Rev. J. B. Pinney, 
whom the South Carolinians erroneously thought had come 
to Columbia in advocacy of Colonization. And on the next 
column was another reprint which contained an insinuation 
that the Colonizationists were in collusion with South Caro- 
lina slaveholders. 

Again, there was circulated about 1839, by the Abolition- 
ists, a so-called Authentic Narrative of James Williams, an 
American Slave, which set forth the cruel treatment re- 
ceived by southern slaves at the hands of their owners. 
Upon an examination into the authenticity of the Authentic 
Narrative, it was found that the pamphlet was a fabrication, 
and it was repudiated by the antislavery committee which 
made the investigation. 13 

During a session of the Methodist General Conference, in 
Baltimore, an ultra-Abolitionist delegate presented an Abo- 
lition petition containing eleven or twelve hundred signa- 
tures. When investigation was made it was found that 
"scores of names were signed twice, and many . . . were 
. . . forgeries, or declared to be so by the parties. Hun- 
dreds were ascertained to have been signed to a temperance 
memorial, and had been surreptitiously appended to this. 
Whole families . . . were subscribed, who declare they had 
never seen the memorial. . . , 14 Negroes returning from 
Liberia and bringing accounts entirely untrustworthy were 
employed by Garrisonians to set forth the " true " condition 
of affairs in Africa. 15 

13 African Repository, vol. xv, pp. 161-163. 

14 Ibid., vol. xvi, pp. 350-351. 

15 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., B. M. Palmer 
to Gurley, Charleston, S. C, May 26, 1834. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 131 

In 1842 an Abolitionist lecturer of Vermont assured his 
auditors that the Colonizationists were throwing money 
away, having already made away with more than one hun- 
dred million dollars since 1817. Upon protest from a cler- 
gyman who was in the audience, the lecturer assured his 
hearers that his statement was drawn from the official rec- 
ords of the Society. As a matter of fact he had overstated 
his figures something over ninety-nine and a half million 
dollars. 16 An Indiana Colonization agent reported that in 
that State the Abolitionists were using as an argument 
against the Society the statement that " the men who are 
engaged in taking free blacks to Liberia bring back two or 
three slaves for every black taken out." 17 Judge Samuel 
Wilkeson, General Agent of the Society, wrote to a Ver- 
mont Colonizationist : 

The abolitionists in many parts of the country are becoming quiet. 
You observe that they have made some statements which you believe 
untrue but have not the means of correcting them. Those who con- 
trol the abolition press generally are destitute or reckless of truth, 
making statements of which they have not' the evidence of truth, or 
which they know to be false. For instance, Mr. Garrison published 
me last fall as a large slaveholder in Florida. I called on his agent 
and assured him that I never owned a slave, and requested him to 
contradict the charge, which instead of being done, the falsehood 
has gone the rounds of every abolition paper in the Union. 18 

Besides these direct misstatements of fact, the Garrison- 
ians made sweeping assertions that are utterly incapable of 
proof, but which cannot be refuted except by a considera- 
tion of the whole history of the Society. Garrison charged, 
for instance, that the American Colonization Society "is 
pledged not to oppose the system of slavery " ; " apologizes 
for slavery and slaveholders " ; " is nourished by fear and 
selfishness " ; " aims at the utter expulsion of the blacks " ; 
"is the disparager of the free blacks"; "deceives and mis- 
leads the nation." 19 

When the debt of the Colonization Society was published 

16 Ibid., Dr. A. Proudfit to Whittlesey, New York, September, 
1842. 

17 Ibid., B. T. Kavanaugh to McLain, Indianapolis, April 18, 1846. 

18 Ibid., Wilkeson to J. P. Fairbanks, June 21, 1839. 

19 African Repository, vol. ix, pp. 105-109. 



132 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

in the February Liberator, 1835, that periodical was exult- 
ant, exclaiming: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. Debt 
of the Handmaid of Slavery, $46,000." In the same issue, 
of eight and one-half feet in columns of printed matter on 
the first page, all but five inches is devoted to tirades against 
the Society, an important part of it being made up of gar- 
bled quotations from Colonization leaders. 20 Cresson writes 
from Glasgow of C. Stuart, confederate and warm co- 
worker with Garrison while Stuart was in America, that 
the latter denounced all those who used West India sugar 
as "doomed to hell, with damnation for their portion." 21 
An Indiana agent reported that the Abolitionist candidate 
for governor of that State, who was also a member of the 
Indiana Supreme Court, in an attack upon Colonization 
spoke " in a most loose, vulgar, and abusive manner inso- 
much that the ladies were driven off." 22 Examples of the 
immoderate, misleading and untrue statements of Mr. Gar- 
rison's paper are the following: "We are becoming daily 
more versed in the corruption of the advocates of the Amer- 
ican Colonization Society. With all their insolence, they 
are dastardly." "The records of the Colonization Society 
are obvious exhibitions of deceitfulness." "As it is at 
present organized, the American Colonization Society can- 
not justly make any pretension to justice or mercy, with 
more plausibility than they could who brought the natives 
of Congo from their own land." 23 Commenting on the 
debt of the Colonization Society, the same publication ex- 
claimed : 

We have not room for all the speeches that were delivered, but 
the following extracts [which, by the way, were very misleading 
summaries of those delivered at the annual meeting] show that the 
Genius of Contradiction presided on the occasion, assisted by Hy- 
pocrisy, Falsehood, Desperation and Folly. The days of the Society 
are numbered. Glory to God in the highest! 2 * 

20 Ibid., vol. xi, p. 57; vol. x, pp. 356-360; The Liberator, Feb. 22, 
1834. 

21 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to 
Gurley, Glasgow, Mar. 15, 1833. 

22 Ibid., Kavanaugh to McLain, Indianapolis, April 30, 1846. 

23 The Liberator, May 18, 1833. 

24 Ibid., Feb. 8, 1834. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 133 

One would think that the editor would have hesitated in 
his sweeping characterizations, for in the same paper is 
contained the admission : 

Were numbers necessary to the success of the Colonization So- 
ciety? It has enrolled upon its list, the high and the low, the rich 
and the poor, all classes of people, in multitudinous gatherings and 
multiform varieties. Did it need the sanctity of religion? What 
theological institution, what religious sect, what presbytery, synod, 
general assembly, conference, or church, what eminent divine or 
deacon, what religious periodical or newspaper, has it not until 
recently counted approvingly on its side? Did it need political 
favor? It has been appropriated by all parties. ... In short, in 
its ranks have stood, hand in hand, the Presbyterian and the Quaker, 
the Episcopalian and Baptist, the Methodist and Unitarian, the Uni- 
versalist and Infidel— the freeholder and slaveholder. . . . 25 

It seems not to have occurred to the editor that an organi- 
zation which could boast of such a host of supporters was 
not to be condemned in terms of wanton ridicule and sar- 
castic vituperation. 

A further method of the Garrisonians was to draw in 
lurid colors utterly untrustworthy pictures of slavery as a 
system, pictures which fired the minds of the New Eng- 
ender and exasperated the Southerner, who was perfectly 
acquainted with the system. 26 On a par with these were 
the unqualified statements of Garrison that (i) slavehold- 
ing is in all cases sinful, (2) it should be immediately pro- 
hibited, (3) "If it were evident that only by a short delay, 
he could be better prepared to receive the boon of liberty, 
still the slave ought to be a free man now. . . " 27 

The Colonization agent had to endure not only this whole- 
sale condemnation of the cause in which he labored but also, 
in many cases, personal calumny. Elliot Cresson, on a mis- 
sion to England for the promotion of the Colonization 
cause, wrote from Edinboro: 

In no place has the A[nti] S[lavery] party had recourse to more 
abject means of insult. ... In these assaults, for myself, supported 
by the consciousness of my high mission, I care not; but if you do 
not vindicate yourselves thro' me and meet the libels of the A. S. 
Party, by prompt letters . . . the cause must suffer. Let' them 

25 Ibid., Dec. 13, 1834. 

26 Ibid., May 3, 1834, p. 71. 

27 Ibid., March 7, 1835. 



134 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

know that I enjoy your entire confidence, and that every penny re- 
ceived, is religiously devoted to legitimate purposes — for to check 
the current of benevolence, I found it whispered about that I was 
without authority from you — disbursing your funds for my own 
purposes, and any other means as miscreants deemed most likely to 
circumvent me. 28 

Indeed, he became restive under the continued vexations to 
which he was subjected. He could not hear from Coloni- 
zation headquarters frequently enough to keep up such a 
defensive as desired and, in exasperation, he asked, " How 
can I fight (for fight I must) if I have neither weapons or 
ammunition? Must I like the spider spin them out of my 
own unaided self ? " 29 

So reckless had the Garrisonians become in their deter- 
mination to gain their ends that they resorted to the frank 
statement of sentiments which, but for the burning question 
of slavery, would have branded them for all time as traitors 
to their country. When the discussion between this coun- 
try and Great Britain over the northeast boundary between 
the United States and Canada was at its height, an Ameri- 
can negro, Redmond, who was a Garrisonian lecturer and 
was speaking in Scotland, openly advocated war between 
the United States and Great Britain, even at the risk of 
the defeat of his own country, and for the reason that it 
would bring about the emancipation of the slaves at the 
South. 30 The British Garrisonians were in accord with 
this view. One of their newspapers gave this exaggerated 
view of the slave system in America : 

The horrors of the slave system, as pursued in the Southern 
States, are unutterable; nothing that the wildest imagination can 
conceive surpasses the cruelties inflicted on the wretched negro vic- 
tims ; and if it were in our power to stir up the spirit of the slaves 
to rebel against the heartless planters ... we would use that power, 
though all America was thrown into disorder, and presented one 
wide field of bankruptcy and ruin. 31 

A contributor to Fraser's Magazine, taking his data from 

28 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to Gur- 
ley, Edinboro, Mar. 19, 1833. 

29 Ibid., Cresson to Gurley, Adelphi, June 6, 1833; London, Octo- 
ber 6, 1831. 

30 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. No. 283, p. 1026. 
81 Ibid., pp. 1026-1027. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I35 

a recent publication of the American Abolitionists, urged 
upon the British the high moral duty to declare war against 
the United States, with the ultimate aim of freeing the 
slaves in the South. Taking the Abolitionist statements at 
their face value, the writer urged that America " holds 
nearly three millions of unoffending human creatures in 
the most cruel bondage ; in a thraldom infinitely worse than 
Egyptian, Turkish, or Sclavonian. In fact, we doubt if the 
annals of the human race afford an example of any system 
of oppression at all approaching to that which is proved 
... to exist in America." The dissolution of the Union 
was, then, highly desirable, both for the security of Great 
Britain's possessions and for the abolition of slavery in the 
United States. Immediately upon the declaration of such 
a war, if it were made clear that it was to be prosecuted as 
a war for emancipation, the free blacks of Jamaica would 
lend their aid at once. " In one morning a force of ten 
thousand men might be raised in this quarter. ... In 
three weeks . . . the entire south would be in one con- 
flagration." 32 

The North Carolina Quaker, Jeremiah Hubbard, who 
was willing to go as far as any man in a rational program 
for the abolition of slavery, made these observations upon 
Garrisonian methods : 

I would give thee a little specimen of his style and manner of 
writing; in his opinion of the Colonization Society, he says: — "The 
superstructure of the Colonization Society rests upon the following 
pillars. 1. Persecution. 2. Falsehood. 3. Cowardice. 4. Infidelity. 
If I do not prove the Colonization Society to be a creature, without 
heart, without brains, eyeless, unnatural, hypocritical, relentless, un- 
just, then nothing is capable of demonstration!!!" His language 
to slaveholders, or of slaveholders is, " They are hypocrites, man- 
stealers ; and such as hold offices in the United States," he says, " are 
guilty of corrupt perjury, and unless they repent, will have their 
part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone." This kind of 
language is not at all calculated to make good impressions on the 
minds of slaveholders, even of those of whom it may be true, and 
it is utterly false as respects many who hold slaves — they would be 
very glad to have it in their power to put their slaves in a better 
situation. . . . 8S 

82 Fraser's Magazine, London, April, 1841, pp. 494-502. 
** African Repository, vol. x, p. 37 ff. 



I36 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Hubbard was Clerk of the yearly meeting of Friends of 
North Carolina, a member of both the Colonization Society 
and an Abolition Society, though not of Garrison's school, 
a leader among a group of seven or eight thousand Quakers 
of North Carolina, who had contributed thousands of dol- 
lars toward the Colonization Society, had fought slavery 
for upwards of fifty years, had for forty years repeatedly 
memorialized the legislature for permission to conscientious 
slaveholders to manumit their slaves, had assisted about one 
thousand slaves to seek their liberty in a free State. And 
Hubbard's comment is : " After all this, by the above posi- 
tive denunciation we are indirectly assailed by the coloni- 
zation persecutors as liars, cowards, infidels, without heart, 
without brains, eyeless, unnatural, hypocritical, unjust. 
Such language, my brethren, is not calculated to conquer 
enemies, gain friends, soften hard hearts, or convince infi- 
dels, even if it were true." 34 

The fierceness and boldness of these Abolitionist attacks 
were not without tremendous effect. Some of the most 
consistent Colonizationists of New England were startled 
by their "revelations." Ezra S. Gannet was one of this 
class. He had read statements made in Boston by Thomas 
C. Brown, a former colonist who, having become dis- 
gruntled because of the failure, up to this time, of the Colo- 
nization Society to pay a claim held against them for 
lumber that Brown had shipped, 85 had been employed as a 
Garrisonian lecturer to " inform " the New Englanders of 
conditions in Liberia and of the attitude of Colonizationists 
toward slavery. Gannet was wise enough to write to Colo- 
nization headquarters for their statement of the facts about 
which Brown had spoken. 36 The reply was satisfactory 
and Gannet continued his relations with the Colonization- 
ists. 37 In his reply, he refers to the " most unmerited and 

34 Ibid., vol. x, pp. 214-215. 

35 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Grimke to 
Gurley, 1854. 

36 Ibid., Gannet to Gurley, Boston, June 19, 1834. 

37 Ibid., Nov. 12, 1834. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 137 

shameful abuse from violent Anti-Slavery" writers, to 
which the Society and its agents had been subjected, and of 
the "extravagance and intemperance of Mr. Garrison." 
The anti-slavery agitator, Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, of London, 
wrote to the American delegates to the Anti-Slavery Con- 
vention held in that city in 1840: "I admit that you have 
completely succeeded in drawing a repulsive picture of the 
Society, but I do not admit that it gives a fair idea of the 
reality." 38 

A group of Colonizationist students from Western Re- 
serve College wrote Gurley in 1832 of the effect The Lib- 
erator had already had in the College before Garrison had 
been publishing it two years. Before its appearance upon 
the reading tables of that institution the student body had 
expressed no doubt of the sincerity of the Colonization 
movement. By 1832 not only students but the faculty were 
enlisted in two opposing groups. One group wrote : 

We had always supposed . . . that the Colonization Society was 
friendly to human rights, was the avowed enemy of slavery, an 
uncompromising foe of the oppressor; and that its ultimate design 
and tendency was to free the captive. . . . We had supposed these 
to be its claims, and that these were incontrovertible. _ But they are 
flatly denied in this same land of Ohio, and the institution de- 
nounced, as wanting even the common sanction of benevolent 
design ! 39 

It was thus throughout New England and the West. If 
Garrison caught the ear of some of the most prominent men 
of those sections of the Union, it is not difficult to picture the 
effect his clear cut, unmistakable charges had upon the minds 
of those who accepted without deep reflection the sentiments 
they heard or read upon a topic so absorbing as that of negro 
slavery. From Portland, Maine, the report from the Colo- 
nizationist agent came, that "a prodigious current turned 
after" Garrison. 40 The Secretary of the Society, after a 

38 African Repository, vol. xvi, pp. 311-313. 

39 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Students of 
Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, to Gurley, October 29, 
1832. 

40 Ibid., Cummings to J. N. Danforth, Portland, Maine, February 
14. 1832. 



I38 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

tour of New England during the summer of 1834, reported 
evidences of a distinct change of sentiment in New England 
unfavorable to the Society. Coming as it does from him, 
the following statement is not without value, as showing the 
view taken by Gurley of the motives and hopes of Coloni- 
zationists. He says: 

Yet in the light of clearest evidence, that the American Coloniza- 
tion Society was designed and has been sustained with the view of 
affording means and motives for the voluntary, peaceful and entire 
abolition of slavery; that its moral influence favorable to emanci- 
pation, has been and is operating most extensively and powerfully 
at the South, the anti-slavery men of the North denounce it as the 
friend and ally of slavery, and attempt its overthrow with more 
zeal and effort, if possible, than even that of slavery itself. Be- 
cause the friends of colonization are indisposed to pursue a course 
which must, in their opinion, put in imminent jeopardy the peace 
and safety of a large portion of the country, endanger the security 
and even the very existence of the Federal Government, because 
they believe that the consent of the South is indispensable to any 
plan for the abolition of slavery, they are denounced as enemies to 
the colored race and to the cause of Liberty. 41 

There is a good deal of the prophetic in this utterance. 

If there was any distinctive feature of William Lloyd 
Garrison's efforts from 1831 to 1839, it was the alienation 
of New England and the West from the spirit of coopera- 
tion with the South, in the effort to get rid of slavery, to 
the spirit of antagonism against the South, in the effort to 
force that section to abolish slavery. If the methods of 
Garrison during those years had any inevitable result, it 
was that of replacing nationalism by sectionalism. A gen- 
eration had not passed away before the surmises of Gurley 
had become regrettable fact. Eight years after the tour 
upon which comment has just been made, he was in New 
England again ; and this time he found churches closed 
against him and all those who worked with him ; he found 
the New England public apathetic toward the essentially 
national efforts of his Society; he found the clergy either 
cowed into silence by the pronounced views of their congre- 
gations or else themselves victims of the adroit, if unscru- 
pulous, lecturers, editors, and agitators who visited every 

41 African Repository, vol. x, pp. 12O/-139. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 39 

New England and Western town. 42 By 1840 Garrison had 
accomplished very well one thing — the consolidation of 
New England and the then Northwest in an aggressive sec- 
tionalism. Those individuals from the North who had vis- 
ited the South, or who had resided there, understood that 
the denunciations of Garrison were based upon a picture 
of a system of slavery that, as a system, had no existence 
save in the mind of that leader. 43 But, unfortunately, those 
were not the days of railroad and telegraph lines, and Gar- 
rison and the masses whom he influenced knew little of the 
real system of slavery that existed in the South. 44 

Public opinion unified and sectional passion excited, the 
next step in the program of the Garrisonians was to enter 
politics. Hereafter the fitness of a candidate was to be 
judged by his agreement or disagreement with their views 
on the subject of slavery. This step had been reached be- 
fore the end of the thirties. 45 It was the most dangerous 
step Abolitionists ever took. It is always dangerous for 
any considerable section to test the fitness of those political 
leaders who sit as the nation's lawmakers by their position 
upon any issue that is essentially sectional. By 1840 the 
New Hampshire Garrisonians had so far developed their 
scheme of coercion as to determine to unsettle all clergy- 
men in the State who would not subscribe to their views. 48 
If we will remember that the mass of the people of New 
England knew little of the system of slavery as it actually 
existed at the South, and also that it was these same people 
who elected or refused to elect those candidates and those 
clergymen who offered their services to the State and to 
the Church, we shall better understand why the very leaders 

42 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Nov. 25, 1842, pp. 294-307; Letters of American Coloni- 
zation Society, MS., Danforth to Gurley, December 21, 1832; S. M. 
Worcester to Gurley, Amherst College, November 5, 1834. 

43 Ibid., G. D. Abbot to Gurley, New York, Jan. 15, 1833. 

44 Ibid., Amos A. Phelps, Andover Theological Seminary, Jan. 
IS, 1828. 

45 African Repository, vol. xv, p. 19 ff. 

48 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Prof. O. P. 
Hubbard to Wilkeson, Dartmouth College, May 5, 1840. 



I40 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

in New England thought were anti-Garrisonians in 1832, 
while, in 1840, many of them had gone over to that faith. 

It must not be supposed that William Lloyd Garrison and 
The Liberator, alone, conquered the Colonization spirit of 
New England and the Northwest. There were other 
speakers and other papers, many of them. It seems that at 
the Granville, Ohio, postoffice in 1836, there were being 
taken, or were sent, more than three hundred Abolition 
publications and only one publication of the Colonization- 
ists. 47 The President of the Granville Colonization Society 
wrote that of six hundred and ninety periodicals, religious, 
scientific, professional, and Abolition, emanating from one 
hundred and twenty presses, there was but one copy of the 
African Repository and no other Colonization paper taken ; 
also, that "Anti-Slavery lecturers have for several years 
past visited us every few weeks or months; sometimes re- 
maining a week or two and lecturing as often as they could 
collect a congregation." 48 Gurley in 1842 estimated the 
proportion of Colonization to Abolition lecturers to be about 
one to one hundred. 49 At any rate, there had come over 
some prominent Colonizationists a radical change of senti- 
ment, and some Colonization leaders became such opponents 
of the Society as to out-Garrison Garrison. 

One of these was Arthur Tappan who, by 1833, came to 
the opinion that "The Colonization Society is a device of 
Satan and owes its existence to the single motive to per- 
petuate slavery." 50 And Gerrit Smith, who had given thou- 
sands of dollars to the Society and had expressed his dis- 
pleasure with the methods of Garrison, was a radical of the 
radicals by 1838. He had been asked to contribute to the 
erection of a Methodist Church in New Orleans. He re- 
fused to do so, and stated his reason as follows : 

Suppose I were invited to contribute to the cost of erecting a 
heathen temple, could I innocently comply with the request? . . . 

47 Ibid., Seven Wright to Gales, Granville, Ohio, March 23, 1836. 

48 Ibid., W. S. Richards to Gurley, Granville, Ohio, March 28, 1838. 

49 Ibid., Gurley to R. S. Finley, Dec. 14, 1842, No. 489. 
60 Ibid., Tappan to Gurley, New York, June 26, 1833. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I4 1 

Now, I take it for granted, that the Religion which is to be preached 
in the " place of worship " which you invite me to assist in prepar- 
ing is the Religion of the South; and I put it to your candor, 
-whether it is not, therefore, fairly to be considered as an idolatrous 
M place of worship." 51 

Besides the direct attacks made by the Garrisonians upon 
the Colonization Society and those who were interested in 
it, that party worked indirectly but very effectively to the 
prejudice of Colonization by discouraging the blacks from 
offering to emigrate to the colony. The word "emigra- 
tion " was replaced by the words " banishment," " expatria- 
tion," and so on. Although the records have been exam- 
ined, not a single case of involuntary exportation has been 
revealed; but the use of those terms kept many a negro 
from offering to go to Liberia. The free blacks, who at 
one time hailed with delight the opportunity of returning to 
the land of their fathers, began to adopt resolutions in oppo- 
sition to the Society, and after the thirties there was a 
marked indisposition among them to emigrate to the colony. 62 
In the South probably the most effective argument against 
the Colonization Society was that it was but a form of Abo- 
litionism ; in the North and Northwest, that its purpose was 
to " rivet the chains of the slave." The persistence of those 
who used these contradictory arguments ought to be well 
nigh conclusive of the motives of Colonizationists. But 
hitherto it has never been so. B3 Henry Clay expressed the 
position of the Society when he said : " Both objections can- 
not be founded in truth. Neither is." 54 The proslavery 

61 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 48-49- 

52 Carey, p. 2; Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., 
Burr to Gurley, Richmond, Va., January 27, 1834; African Reposi- 
tory, vol. xvi, p. 114; Speech of Edward Everett at Anniversary of 
American Colonization Society, January 18, 1853; Manuscript Divi- 
sion, Library of Congress, Massachusetts Broadsides, 24th Anti- 
Slavery Bazaar. 

°3 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 341-343 ; vol. vi, p. iff. ; vol. ix, 
pp. 228-229; vol. xii, p. 298; vol. xiv, pp. 17-18; vol. xix, p. 152. 

54 No more complete refutation of the charges of the Abolition- 
ists, who declared that the Colonization Society forged the chains 
of the slaves, can be given than the following references to private 
letters written by leading agents of the Society. They contain what 
■ought to be a final answer to those who made, or continue to make, 
those charges. Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Bir- 



142 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

slaveholders, and it is a pity Garrison could not realize that 
there were actually antislavery slaveholders in the South, 
ought to have understood that an organization that was as 
persistently opposed by the Abolitionists as was the Coloni- 
zation Society, could not be considered an advocate of a 
general and immediate abolition of slavery ; and the Aboli- 
tionists ought to have understood that an organization that, 
in 1832, could not maintain an agency in either Georgia or 
South Carolina, was hardly to be convicted of collusion 
with slaveholders. 55 

Colonizationists believed that a general, immediate, and 
unconditional emancipation of all the slaves in the Union 
was impracticable and undesirable: impracticable (1) be- 
cause there was no constitutional right of the federal gov- 
ernment to enact a general emancipation provision, (2) be- 
cause the States alone having the right to pass emancipation 
measures would do so only as the public sentiment of each 
slave State became favorable to emancipation, (3) because 
public sentiment in the slave States was not yet favorable ; 
undesirable (1) because it was believed that three millions 
of negro slaves set free at one time would be unable to care 

ney to Gurley, Huntsville, Alabama, July 12, 1832; Mechlin to Gur- 
ley, Liberia, February 28, 1833; Cresson to Gurley, Mar. 15, 1833; 
Danforth to Gurley, Boston, December 28, 1832; J. H. Cocke to 
Gurley, Norfolk, January 14. 1833; Gallaudet to Gurley, Hartford, 
March 24, 1833; Finley-Birney to Gurley, New Orleans, April 13, 
1833; Gurley to Fendall, Boston, August 3, 1835; T. B. Balch to 
Wilkeson, Locust Hill, October 11, 1839; Balch to Wilkeson, New 
Baltimore, November 20, 1839; J. D. Mitchell to Cresson, Liberty, 
December 28, 1839; Henkle (see Cresson to Wilkeson), February 
27, 1840; Ker (see Cresson to Wilkeson), Miss., March 12, 1840; 
W. McKenney to Wilkeson, Greensboro, N. C, November 6, 1840; 
Mrs. M. B. Blackford to Gurley, Va., January 28, 1843; C. W. An- 
drews to McLain, Virginia, Mar. 27, 1843 ; Tracy to Gurley, Boston, 
May 8, 1843; Pinney to McLain, April 5, 1845; D. L. Carroll to 
McLain, New York, July 5, 1845. 

No effort has been made to continue these references beyond the 
year 1845, for it is believed that there is no doubt about the position 
of the Colonization Society after that time. Nor is the above a 
complete list. It is deemed, however, sufficient to set forth the true 
view of the Society on the subject of slavery. 

55 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., March 7, 1832; March 12, 1832; March 26, 1832; April 
9, 1832; July 11, 1832. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 43 

for themselves, and would be more wretched than under a 
system of slavery, (2) because the so-called free negro was 
not in any true sense free, and it was believed would not 
become really free until he was taken back to his native 
country and there, under the supervision of sympathetic 
governors, was taught self-sustenance and self-government, 
(3) because of the danger of a race war in the States of 
the lower South. They recognized slavery to be an evil. 
The remedy for it they believed to be gradual emancipation, 
made practicable through (1) cooperation between the dif- 
ferent sections of the Union, (2) the education of slave- 
holders, (3) and the transportation of those manumitted or 
emancipated. They hoped and believed that such States 
as Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee would 
enact general emancipation measures within a period of time 
not very remote, and that with these States free, the rest 
would follow, as the success of emancipation and transpor- 
tation combined was demonstrated. They hoped to exert 
a powerful moral influence in favor of emancipation, but 
were opposed to the use of illegal means or means whose 
result might be to involve the sections in civil war, or bring 
about the dissolution of the Union. The gradual abolition 
of slavery was not to be an incidental object of the Society. 
It was to be one of the two direct, distinct, and primary 
objects: (i) to give real freedom to the nominally free 
American negro, by returning him to his native land and 
there encouraging his highest development, (2) to exert 
the most powerful moral pressure consistent with national 
peace and unity in favor of an emancipation as rapid as 
practicable, and both universal and absolute. 56 

From its origin, the Society used with eagerness every op- 
portunity to secure the liberation of slaves by offering to 
transport them to the colony, unless the condition of its 
treasury was such that it could not afford the expenditure. 

56 African Repository, vol. vii, pp. 49, 176, 200-201, 314; vol. ix, 
pp. 228-229; vol. x, p. 148; vol. ix, pp. 188-189; vol. i, pp. 15-16; 
Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Ker to Gurley, New 
Orleans, April 2, 1832; East Att'leborough, December 24, 1831. 



144 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

When slaveholders wrote for advice as to the disposition of 
their slaves, as they often did, the Society consistently ad- 
vised the emancipation of those in bondage, unless the case 
involved some peculiar circumstance. There has been 
found on the records of the Society no instance in which 
the organization ever assisted a slaveholder to retain the 
possession of slaves whose right to liberty was called into 
question. There are a number of instances in which the 
Society intervened in suits to secure the liberty of slaves, 
the total number involved running up into the hundreds. 
After 1839 the organization became almost aggressively 
anti-slavery. Abandoning its former position — the use of 
moral suasion to bring about gradual emancipation — it be- 
came, in many respects, a moderate abolition society. Dur- 
ing this latter period it would send throughout the land 
reports on the number of slaves offered to it, on condition 
that it would transport them, and would directly appeal 
for funds to secure the liberation of the negroes. It is be- 
lieved that this is a fair statement of its position on the sub- 
ject of slavery. If so, it will be seen that the Garrisonians 
did great injustice to the whole movement and the leaders 
engaged in it. 

The fundamental difference between the Garrisonian and 
the Colonizationist was this : the Garrisonians approached 
their task from the point of view of the eradication of an 
evil; the Colonizationists, from the point of view of the 
solution of a problem. Of the three phases of the question, 
the practicability, the desirability, and the method of the 
immediate liberation of the slave, the Garrisonian assumed 
the first two and considered only the third a problem; the 
colonizationist recognized a problem in all three. To the 
Colonizationist, the difference between gradual emancipa- 
tion and immediate emancipation was not equal to the 
calamity of the dissolution of the Union, or an American 
civil war, or both. To the Garrisonian, the difference was 
worth that much. The Colonizationist chose rather to de- 
lay the day of complete emancipation than to live to see the 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 145 

day of the division, probably a bloody division, of the 
Union. The Garrisonian chose the dissolution of the Union 
rather than the delay of a general emancipation. 

Whatever difficulty present day writers on the Abolitionist 
movement have in explaining the denial of Lincoln that he 
was a member of that party, or, whatever difficulty they 
may have in explaining his preference for Colonization, 
they may see, from this point of view, that, taken for 
granted his paramount consideration of the Union and its 
preservation, the only logical position he could take was 
that taken by Colonizationists. Lincoln undoubtedly op- 
posed negro slavery, but the evidence seems conclusive that 
he emancipated the slaves, not out of his hatred of slavery, 
but out of his love for the Union. He stated very clearly 
his position in the following words : 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under 
the Constitution. The sooner the National authority can be re- 
stored, the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it was." If 
there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at 
the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be 
those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same 
time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount 
object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save 
or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any 
slave, I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, 
I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving 
others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and 
the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; 
and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help 
to save the Union. 88 

The preservation of the Union was his paramount consid- 
eration ; the emancipation of slaves was an important con- 
sideration, but nevertheless, it was a secondary considera- 
tion. He would have sacrificed immediate emancipation for 
the sake of preserving the Union. The Garrisonians would 
have sacrificed the Union for the sake of immediate eman- 
cipation. In short, Lincoln's position was precisely that of 
the Colonizationists and precisely the opposite of that of the 
Garrisonians. If Garrison's influence in bringing about the 

57 J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from 1850-1877, vol. 
iv, p. 74. 

10 



I46 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Proclamation of Emancipation were not overestimated, and 
if his influence in bringing about the American Civil War 
were not underestimated, he would be given a more just, 
if not a more exalted, place in American history. 

A well known historical writer assures us, in reference to 
anti-slavery leaders, that " it must not be supposed that 
. . . even the agitators realized that slavery had the latent 
power of dividing the Union and bringing about civil 
war." 58 This statement, it seems, is at variance with the 
facts. Between 1831 and 1845 tne y were so frequently 
and so earnestly warned of the logical consequences of their 
course, by patriots who represented every section of the 
Union, that those who neglected those warnings must be 
charged with either ignorance or indifference. If they did 
not see, it was because they had closed their eyes to the 
light. When Harrison Gray Otis of Boston spoke in Fan- 
euil Hall, in 1835, he said : 

Now, sir, if it were the object of our meeting here to debate the 
expediency of taking measures for the abolition of slavery, I would 
regard it as identical with the question of the expediency of dis- 
solving the Union. I am sure it would be so considered by the 
Southern States. My conviction results from forty years acquaint- 
ance with prominent individuals of those States, of all parties, and 
in all the vicissitudes of party. Be assured that whenever that ques- 
tion shall be agitated in our public assemblies, under circumstances 
which should indicate the prevalence or the probability of a general 
sentiment inthe free States in favor of acting upon that subject, 
the Union will be at an end. They would regard all measures ema- 
nating from such a sentiment as war in disguise upon their lives, 
their property, their rights and institutions, an outrage upon their 
pride and honor, and the faith of contracts — menacing the purity of 
their women, the safety of their children, the comfort of their homes 
and their hearths, and, in a word, all that a man holds dear. In 
these opinions they might be mistaken, but in support of them they 
would exhibit a spectacle of unanimity unparallelled among so nu- 
merous a population upon any subject, at' any time, in any part of 
the world. 58 

"Every effort," said he, "intended to propagate a general 
sentiment favorable to the immediate abolition of slavery, 
is of forbidding aspect and ruinous tendency." " I wit- 
nessed the adoption of the Constitution, and through a long 

58 Hart, Slavery and Abolition, p. 3. 

59 African Repository, vol. xi, pp. 311-318. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 147 

series of years, have been accustomed to rely upon an adher- 
ence to it as the foundation of all my hopes for posterity. 
It is threatened, I think, with the most portentous danger 
that has yet arisen." 

Judge William Halsey of New Jersey expressed his view 
of the results of abolitionism: 

It is time for the friends of Colonization to come out and . 
shew the extremely dangerous tendency of their proceedings and 
oppose by every means except force, mobs, and lynch laws. The 
situation of things requires the serious consideration of the friends 
of the harmony and integrity of the Union. We appear to be asleep 
upon a volcano, insensible of our danger. It may soon burst forth 
and spread desolation throughout our land. 60 

The general agent of the Colonization Society for Massa- 
chusetts wrote of the doctrines of the ultra-Abolitionists : 

It was seen by some from the beginning that the leaders of that 
society were propagating a deep and refined metaphysical system, 
which must naturally end in the "no-human-government theory"; 
in the doctrine that not only slavery, but the state, the church, and 
even the legal relations of husbands and wives, parents and children, 
ought to be abolished. 61 

In a debate in the Senate in 1839 Henry Clay declared 
that the ultra-Abolitionists were resolved to persevere at all 
hazards and without regard to consequences, however ca- 
lamitous. Continuing, he said: 

With them, the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of 
the powers of the General Government is nothing; the acknowledged 
and incontestible powers of the States are nothing; civil war, a dis- 
solution of the Union, and the overthrow of a government in which 
are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are noth- 
ing. A single idea has taken possession of their minds, and onward 
they pursue it, overlooking all barriers, reckless and regardless of 
all consequences. . . . Utterly destitute of constitutional or other 
rightful power, living in totally distinct communities as alien to the 
communities in which the subject on which they would operate re- 
sides, so far as concerns political power over that subject, as if they 
lived in Africa or Asia, they nevertheless promulgate to the world 
their purpose to be to manumit forthwith, . . . and without moral 
preparation, three millions of negro slaves, under jurisdictions alto- 
gether separated from those under which they live. . . . Does any 
considerate man believe it to be possible to effect such an object 
without convulsion, revolution, and bloodshed? . . . The abolition- 
ists, let me suppose, succeed in their present aim of uniting the 

60 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Halsey t'o 
Wilkeson, Newark, January 12, 1841. 

61 African Repository, vol. xviii, pp. 369-376. 



I48 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

inhabitants of the free States as one man, against the inhabitants 
of the slave States. Union on the one side will beget union on the 
other. And this process of reciprocal consolidation will be attended 
with all the violent prejudices, embittered passions, and implacable 
animosities which ever degraded or deformed human nature. A 
virtual dissolution of the Union will have taken place, whilst the 
forms of its existence remain. . . . One section will stand in men- 
acing and hostile array against the other. The collision of opinion 
will be quickly followed by a clash of arms. I will not attempt^to 
describe scenes which now happily lie concealed from our view. 62 

In Ohio, Elisha Whittlesey in 1839 openly charged the 
Abolitionists with views hostile to the Union, " as well from 
the tendency of their measures, as from a sermon preached 
last year at Braintree, Massachusetts, that went the rounds, 
as canonical ; in which a separation of the Union is hailed 
as the most happy of all events." 63 In 1833 C. F. Mercer, 
of Virginia, gave this challenge to the Abolitionists : 

Let those who oppose the colonization of Africa, by our colored 
population, because it is not a scheme for the immediate abolition 
of slavery in America, justify, if they can, to God and man, their 
hostility to a plan of enlarged policy, as well as of expanded be- 
nevolence and piety, because it does not propose to accomplish all 
that they desire, and because thev desire to do that which if accom- 
plished, as they propose, would prostrate the fair fabric of our 
Union, and with it the hopes of freedom to man. ei 

James Garland, of Virginia, said of the effects of Garri- 
sonian abolitionism : " Week by week, day by day, and hour 
by hour, they are creating among your youth feelings of 
strong prejudice and hostility to the institutions of the 
South," and he stated in unmistakable terms that aggressive 
action from the North would be met with a definite, united 
opposition from the South. 65 John Tyler in 1838 said : 
" Philanthropy, when separated from policy, is the most 
dangerous agent in human affairs. It is no way distin- 
guishable from fanaticism." Of that form of philanthropy 
called abolition, he says : " It would pull down the pillars of 
the constitution, and even now shakes them most terri- 
bly. . . ." 68 

62 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 50 ff. 

63 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Whittlesey to 
Wilkeson, Canfield, Ohio, November 27, 1830. 

64 African Repository, vol. ix, pp. 265-267. 
68 Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 43-47. 

66 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. No. 283, p. 961. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 49 

The secretary of the Colonization Society saw clearly the 
tendency of Garrisonian Abolition, and he deplored the rash- 
ness which prompted it. Nowhere is the real unionist spirit 
of the Society better set forth than in his letters written to 
its Managers. He traveled and knew sentiment in every 
part of the Union ; and he writes from New York, in 1834: 

For one, I feel that an awful crisis is fast coming upon the coun- 
try and that the slave question is to shake the Union. ... If the 
mild principles of our Society can [ ?] in the public mind, all will be 
safe. But if the pulpit and press of the North is to be enlisted in 
the cause of instant unconditional Abolition, the whole land will be 
filled with violence. The signs of the times are portentous. 67 

The next summer he wrote from Boston : 

That the centre of the nation is to be deeply moved and speedily 
on the subject of slavery is certain. At the next Congress, we 
should, . . . make a powerful and earnest appeal to the General 
Government. Nothing can be lost by such a measure — everything 
may be gained — the preservation of the Union, a gradual, cautious, 
plan of voluntary emancipation, and the regeneration of Africa. 
Should the doctrines and measures of the Abolitionists predominate 
in the non-slaveholding States, disunion, if not a general servile war 
will follow. 68 

The plain unvarnished fact is that William Lloyd Garri- 
son was woefully deficient in his love for the American 
Union. To produce conclusive evidence of this, it is only 
necessary to quote three resolutions offered by him at a 
meeting of the Essex (Massachusetts) Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, in 1842 : 

Resolved, That the American Union is and ever has been since 
the adoption of the Constitution, a rope of sand — a fanciful non- 
entity — a mere piece of parchment — " a rhetorical flourish and splen- 
did absurdity " — and a concentration of the physical force of the 
nation to destroy liberty, and uphold slavery. 

Resolved, That the safety, prosperity, and perpetuity of the non- 
slaveholding States require that their connection be immediately 
dissolved with the slaveholding States in form, as it is now in fact 

Resolved, That the petition presented to the U. S. House of Rep- 
resentatives, by John Q. Adams, from sundry inhabitants of Haver- 
hill, in this county, praying Congress to take measures for a peace- 
ful dissolution of the Union, meets our deliberate and cordial 
approval. 69 

67 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Gales, 
New York, April 17, 1834. 

68 Ibid., Gurley to Fendall, Boston, August 3, 1835 \ Gurley to 
Gales, Portland, September 18, 1835. 

69 African Repository, June, 1842, vol. xviii, p. 189. 



I50 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

If the antislavery agitators did not realize "that slavery- 
had the latent power of dividing the Union and bringing 
about civil war," it was not for lack of warning from the 
sanest statesmen of the time. 

If the spirit of Garrisonianism was the spirit of disunion, 
the spirit of Colonization was the spirit of national unity. 70 
Garrison's attempt to " prick the consciences " of slave- 
holders ended by hardening, rather than " pricking " them, 
and the result was sectional bitterness. Garrison broke the 
bonds of Union ; Colonizationists attempted to heal them. 
The tendency of Abolition was to pull to pieces ; the tend- 
ency of Colonization was to bind together. The Garri- 
sonians believed in antagonism ; the Colonizationists believed 
in cooperation. The Abolitionist slandered ; the Coloniza- 
tionist sympathized. When the slaveholder passed by, the 
Abolitionist pointed the finger of scorn at him ; the Coloni- 
zationist called him brother, and sought to help him solve 
his problem — the negro problem. The Abolitionist . ex- 
claimed, " You must " ; the Colonizationist said, " Let's see 
if we can." The most important unofficial organization in 
making the Civil War irrepressible, if it was irrepressible, 
was ultra- Abolitionism ; the most important unofficial or- 
ganization in trying to bring about a peaceable settlement of 
the negro problem was the Colonization Society. 

It must not be forgotten that Garrisonians were attempt- 
ing — or, what was the same, so far as the alienation of the 
South was concerned, forced the South to the belief that 
they were attempting — to do a thing that was in plain viola- 
tion of the federal Constitution. The most eminent consti- 
tutional lawyers in the United States agreed that the federal 
government had no power to interfere with the institution 
of slavery in those States in which it existed. Daniel 
Webster's view was as follows : 



70 Ibid., vol. i, p. 225; Nov., 1832, p. 275; Minutes of Board of 
Managers of American Colonization Society, MS., November 20, 
1835, p. 197; Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Wilke- 
son to Rev. A. Yates, March 31, 1840, No. 141. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 5 I 

In my opinion, the domestic slavery of the Southern States is a 
subject within the exclusive control of the States themselves; and 
this, I am sure, is the opinion of the whole North. Congress has 
no right to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treat- 
ment of them in any of the States. 71 

We have already seen that Clay's views coincided with 
that of Webster. Harrison Gray Otis was convinced that 
the Garrisonians were attempting to ignore the limitations 
of that instrument. 72 Even the constitution of the Ameri- 
can Anti-Slavery Society contained the admission " that 
each State in which slavery exists has by the Constitution 
of the United States the exclusive right to legislate in regard 
to its abolition in said State." 73 And when it was proposed 
in the New York Anti-Slavery Convention in 1838 to elimi- 
nate a clause of its constitution similar to that just quoted, 
both Judge William Jay and Wendall Phillips opposed the 
elimination. Jay asked: "Is there a sane person in this 
assembly, who does not in his heart believe that ... a law 
[a general abolition law] passed by Congress, instead of 
breaking the fetters of the slave, would instantly dissolve 
the bands of this Union ? The South would not and ought 
not to submit to a usurpation so flagrant and profligate." 74 
And yet, it was just such attempts as this that led Southern- 
ers to distrust the movements of their opponents. 

To Colonizationists it seemed worse than useless, it 
seemed the height of folly, to make constant and consistent 
use of slander and abuse in the attempt to bring about 
emancipation in the South, which could constitutionally be 
brought about only with the consent and by the action of the 
slave States themselves. The Colonizationists were right. 
The difference between the policy pursued by the Abolition- 
ists and that pursued by the Colonizationists was the differ- 
ence between the inevitableness of a civil war, before a 
general emancipation, and the improbability of such a war, 
before a general emancipation. 



71 African Repository, vol. ix, pp. 188-189. 

72 Ibid., vol. xi, pp. 311-318. 

73 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 173. 

74 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 182 ff. 



152 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

The essential mistake the Garrisonians made was in as- 
suming that every slaveholder was a slaveholder from 
choice, and therefore, might be justly called a " manstealer," 
"liar," etc. ad infinitum. For instance, the Garrisonian 
denunciation was applicable to Mrs. Dabney Minor, of Vir- 
ginia, who bought two negro slaves for the express purpose 
of freeing them and sending them to Liberia. 75 Mrs. Mary 
B. Blackford, also of Virginia, in her private letters to the 
Society frequently lamented the existence of the institution 
in her State. "From childhood I have bewailed the unnum- 
bered ills of slavery. This (the Colonization Society) is 
the only plan at all practicable, of lessening, or removing 
them, and fervent is the love and gratitude I feel, to those 
who like you do much for this great cause." 76 She was 
pained to read in the Garrisonian periodicals wholesale 
denunciation, for she knew that many persons at the South 
" make the most noble sacrifices for the benefit of the 
negro." 17 

The Liberator's blanket invective was applicable also to 
Mrs. Ann R. Page, of Virginia — than whom not a purer or 
a nobler spirit lived in the whole of New England — and yet, 
a slaveholder! This combination was incomprehensible to 
the Garrisonian. Ergo, Mrs. Page was a " hypocrite," a 
" manstealer," a " liar," — in short, was doomed to everlast- 
ing punishment. And yet, Mrs. Page almost wore her life 
away in anxiety over the welfare of her negroes. Day 
after day, for years, she gathered them together each morn- 
ing and prayers were offered, scripture read, and they were 
urged to lead such lives as their mistress hoped for them. 
The expense involved in keeping them as she thought they 
should be kept brought on the estate a large debt. In the 
midst of her perplexities her husband died and, by the laws 

75 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., W. S. White 
to Gurley, Charlottesville, Va., April 7, 1839. 

76 Ibid., M. B. Blackford to Gurley, Fredericksburg, Va., Septem- 
ber 18, 1840. 

77 Ibid., M. B. Blackford, Fredericksburg, Va., September 18, 
1840. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 53 

of the State, the slaves had to be sold — one of the greatest 

trials of her life was to see the law take its course in this 

instance. Of her slaves she said: 

My purpose respecting these people I hold to be so sacred that I 
desire not, and even fear to counsel with my dearest and wisest 
friends, because they would all advise me to relieve myself from 
this bondage in which I outwardly live, and which, in their kind- 
ness for me, they have thought would ere now have ended my days. 
... I come to Thee, and look up through the blood of the Cove- 
nant for direction in all the affairs of this estate. And with regard 
to the frequent failures of some of these people in duty, let me not 
be put off by these things, from my settled purpose of doing them 
good. 

When the day for the forced sale came, she retired to her 
room, dreading the probability that a number of the slaves 
would be purchased by the slavedealers present and sent to 
the States at the Southwest. Against this she prayed ; and 
when the sale was over, it was found that although more 
than one hundred had been sold (many still remained un- 
sold) not one had fallen into those dreaded hands. The 
negroes were all to remain near their former home. If this 
were the place, it would be a pleasant task to go further 
into the story of the life of this exalted character, whose 
treatment of her "people" was known throughout the en- 
tire State, and whose life would have been a benediction to 
any community in which she lived — even a community com- 
posed entirely of Garrisonians ! 78 

Taken baldly, as stated by Garrison, his unmeasured 
words were applicable also to General John H. Cocke, of 
Bremo, Virginia, whose hesitation about sending his ne- 
groes, those who were willing to go, to Liberia arose, not 
from his unwillingness to be rid of slaves but from his con- 
viction that they were not able to care for themselves. At 
last he found among them a valuable man, a stone mason, 
a man of good moral character and who gave promise of 
doing well for his family and for the colony. For six 
months before the slave expressed his willingness to leave 
Bremo, his liberty had been at his option. With him were 

78 Ibid., Mrs. A. R. Page to Gurley, Milwood, Va., March 26, 
1831 ; African Repository, vol. xx, pp. 298-305. 



154 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

to go his wife and six children. 79 While the head of the 
house was interested in the colonization of his blacks, the 
mistress, no matter how many visitors had come to enjoy 
her hospitality, every day gathered the children of her 
" people " for instruction, while a pastor was employed to 
give religious instruction to their parents. 80 Finally, the 
all-inclusive character of Garrison's criticism covered the 
case of Miss Mary C. Moore, of North Carolina, who was 
not only willing but anxious to liberate her eight or ten 
negroes and pay the expense of their transportation to Li- 
beria, although her needle was her only means of support 
when the slaves were gone. A citizen of her community, 
who was unwilling to see her bear this expense, asked a 
pointed and significant question : " Do you know of any 
abolitionist who will take these slaves and send them to Li- 
beria, or place them in a state of freedom, in any of the 
States in which it is permitted to emancipate, or in which 
free colored persons may reside? Miss M. will cheerfully 
yield her right to such individuals. But she prefers Africa." 81 
In so far as the Abolitionists opposed the system of slav- 
ery, there can be no doubt that they did a great service to 
the cause of human freedom ; but when this opposition took, 
as it continually did among the Garrisonians, the form of 
intemperate and untrue pictures of the system, and when 
it was distinctly applied in terms of personal abuse and 
slander to every man or woman in the South who owned a 
single slave, it tended more and more not only to make a 
general and peaceable emancipation an utter impossibility, 
but also to result in the enactment of measures more strin- 
gent than ever by State legislatures against the privilege of 
emancipating ; and it was probably the means of preventing 
many a negro from securing his emancipation at the hands 



79 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cooke to Gur- 
ley, Bremo, March 31, 1833. 

80 Ibid., S. B. S. Bissel to McLain, Greenwich, Conn., February 
15, 1845. 

81 Ibid., T. P. Hunt to Gurley, Wilmington, N. C, June 17, 1834; 
African Repository, vol. xvi, pp. 263-264. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 55 

of his owner. It thus resulted in precisely that which the 
Garrisonians professed to oppose: "If it were evident that 
only by a short delay, he could be better prepared to receive 
the boon of liberty, still the slave ought to be a free man 



now 



"82 



It must not be supposed that the writer is unmindful of 
the fact that, during that important decade beginning with 
1830, there was going on in the lower South a most impor- 
tant change of sentiment on the whole question of slavery, 
and that this change must not be too largely attributed to 
resentment that resulted from Garrison's methods. That 
change of sentiment was due, in great measure, to the rapid 
development of the Southwest and the increase in cotton 
production. Laborers were needed ; the soil was, much of 
it, virgin and fertile; negro labor seemed admirably suited 
to the cultivation of cotton. The economic wastefulness of 
the slave system was not yet duly appreciated. The result 
was the internal slave trade between the upper and the lower 
South. Professor Thomas Dew's contribution to the Pro- 
Slavery Argument is indicative of this profound revolution 
in the attitude of the South toward both negro slavery and 
the Colonization Society. The Society made an effort to 
counteract the influence that Professor Dew's essay was 
undoubtedly beginning to have. 

Jesse Burton Harrison wrote his Review of the Slave 
Question after correspondence with and with the coopera- 
tion of the most important officials of the Colonization So- 
ciety, who gave him every encouragement. Harrison states 
the burden of his essay to be as follows : 

To show the necessity of her [Virginia, in particular, and the South, 
in general] promptly doing something to check the palpable mis- 
chiefs her prosperity is suffering from slavery. We design to show- 
that all her sources of economical prosperity are poisoned by slav- 
ery, and we shall hint at its moral evils only as they occasion or 
imply destruction to the real prosperity of a nation. 83 

He undertook to show that " an improving system of agri- 

82 See above. 

88 J. B. Harrison, Review of the Slave Question, pp. 9-15. 



I56 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

culture cannot be carried on by slaves " ; that no soil, except 
the richest can be profitably cultivated by slaves, and even 
then only if its fertility is inexhaustible ; that slaves are unfit 
to develop manufactures, one of the needs of the South; 
that "slave labour is, without controversy, dearer than 
free " ; and that slavery discourages immigration. He further 
declared that " Virginia possesses scarcely a single requisite 
to make a prosperous slave labour State." "We state as 
the result of extensive inquiry, embracing the last fifteen 
years, that a very great proportion of the larger plantations, 
with from fifty to one hundred slaves, actually bring their 
proprietors in debt at the end of a short term of years. . . ." 
Undoubtedly Dew's Essay had far more influence than 
did that of Harrison. The effort, in this study, is not to 
minimize the importance of the change that came over the 
South as a result of economic conditions, or to exaggerate 
the influence of the Garrisonians, but rather to compare the 
methods used by Colonizationists and Garrisonians and to 
set forth that, while both were positively opposed to the 
slave system, the methods of the latter were pregnant with 
serious mischief, while those of the former were indicative 
of a farsighted statesmanship. Dr. S. M. E. Goheen, the 
Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church to Liberia, 
said in 1838: 

Having been educated in a non-slaveholding State, I was daily 
taught to look upon the man who held slaves as a monster scarcely 
human, and at all times to regard those engaged in or holding slaves 
as participating in crimes of the deepest dye; and notwithstanding 
I have resided in one, and traveled in several slave States, and never 
beheld the shade of a shadow o" an attempt at the cruelties said to 
be practiced (daily) upon the slaves, yet it was impossible for me 
to overcome early prejudices, or to believe anything else than that 
slavery as there practiced, was the greatest evil in the States, or in 
the world, which I now very much doubt. 84 

Instead of the methods used by the Garrisonians, the em- 
ployment of statements untrue, in point of fact, and foolish, 
in point of policy, the Colonizationists came much nearer 
the true statement of conditions in the slaveholding States 

84 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 364-365. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 57 

and nearer securing the cooperation of the South in a grad- 
ual emancipation, by the employment of more accurate 
statements. This is well exemplified in a letter written by 
Gurley while in England in 1841 : 

I will not question the Honesty and benevolence of the great body 
of English and American Abolitionists, yet I regard many of their 
writings and proceedings as unjust to the public of the United 
States, particularly to the slaveholders and pernicious in all their 
tendencies. No one can more desire than the writer to see modi- 
fication and amendment of the legal codes of the slaveholding 
States, in favor of the slaves. Atrocious crimes and cruelties are 
doubtless occasionally committed, in those States, on the persons of 
slaves. . . . Generally (and I speak from personal observation and 
inquirv in nearly all the Southern States of the American republic,) 
the citizens of those States are kind, humane, generous, and, in pro- 
portion to the whole population, equal to that found in most parts 
of Christendom, devout and exemplary Christians. No better friends 
have the slaves in any part of the world than are to be found in 
those States. Cases of harsh treatment, of severe punishment, ot 
wanton disregard of their feelings, of the voluntary and cruel rup- 
ture of their domestic ties, of withholding . . . the necessaries of 
life, or denying to them opportunities to hear Christian instruction 
and worship God, are not common ; they are exceptions, not the rule. 
Liabilities to evil in the system of slavery are great; trying separa- 
tions and wrongs among the slaves frequent, yet many laws which 
darken the statute books of the slaveholding States are in practice 
nearly if not quite, obsolete; and humanity and religion are exert- 
ing a mighty and increasing influence for the protection and good 
of this dependent people. . 

Many very many, masters and slaves are bound together by the 
ties of mutual confidence and affection. A large proportion of the 
slaves exhibit an aspect of comfort, contentment and cheerfulness. 
There is much to regret, much to condemn, fearful evils which are 
perhaps never brought to light, in the system of slavery; yet all 
things (the very heavens themselves, as some would represent) are 
not wrapt in gloom. It is not to diminish the general sense of 
injustice as well as impolicy of slavery, viewed as a permanent 
system, that I thus write, nor that I would lessen the moral powers 
that are working for its abolition, but in reference to truth, and 
because he is blind who sees not that injustice to the master is 
injury and a crime against the slave. He who bears false witness 
against me, and seeks to destroy my reputation, must not expect to 
be my counsellor. If the abolitionists of New England and Old 
England have no influence among American slaveholders, and little 
with the citizens generally of the United States, to their errors in 
principle, and more to their faults and offences in practice, must 
they trace the cause. 85 

Let us compare the effects on public opinion of these two 
methods, the Abolition method of antagonism and abuse and 

R5 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. No. 283, pp. 1024-1025. 



158 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the Colonization method of cooperation and sympathy, the 
one designed to bring about the immediate, and the other 
the gradual abolition of slavery. 

Dr. John Ker, one of the most prominent Colonizationists 
in the South, who almost single-handed succeeded in defend- 
ing the right of individuals of Louisiana to emancipate their 
slaves when they were willing to send them to the colony, 
when the State legislature was about to enact a very radical 
measure denying that right to a slaveholder who offered 
upwards of three hundred slaves to the Society, 86 wrote, 
in 183 1 : 

The greatest difficulty we have to encounter is the jealousy of 
Northern interference, and of what the world thinks proper to call, 
" religious fanaticism." What, with you and me and all Christians 
would constitute the highest motive to exertion in this course, 
would only tend in Louisiana, (if urged at all), to paralyze and 
destroy the force of other motives, which fortunately are sufficient. 
I have myself received permission to use the names of some of the 
most influential men in the State ; but it is difficult for you to con- 
ceive how essential it will be to present and great success, to avoid 
most scrupulously, anything which could excite the morbid sensi- 
bility of slaveholders and Southern men by jealousy of our North- 
ern Brethren. 87 

Let those who still believe that there existed between the 
Colonization Society and the slaveholders of Virginia a col- 
lusion whose object was the perpetuation of slavery, read 
the following comment upon the result of Garrisonian 
methods. A careful perusal of the quoted extracts from 
this private letter of a prominent Virginian ought to carry 
some weight in our views relative to (1) the supposed tend- 
ency of the Society to " rivet the chains of the slaves," (2) 
the views of active Southern Colonizationists on the subject 
of emancipation, (3) the methods advised by these men to 
bring about emancipation, (4) characteristics of the South- 
ern temper on the whole subject of slavery, (5) the effects 
of Garrisonian abuse. The writer says : 

It is a great mistake to suppose that the people of our State gen- 
erally will shrink from . . . discussion, or are too sensitive to per- 



86 African Repository, vol. xviii, p. 99 ff. 

87 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Ker to Gur- 
ley, Natchez, Miss., November 24, 1831. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 159 

mit it. On the contrary, I believe a verv large proportion of the 
people, are willing to enquire into the merits of the slave system, 
and that many have their minds open to conviction upon the sub- 
ject Such violent tirades, however, as those issuing from the 
Anti-slavery presses of the North are calculated to do infinite mis- 
chief to the cause, and to rivet with a double bolt, the bonds they 
are intended to lose. You know that no man is more opposed to 
slavery than I am and have been for years. It is not, therefore, 
that any of their declamations about cruelty, mansteahng, etc., has 
any effect on me, that I deplore their course, but I confess I am 
vexed to think that we, who entertain opinions averse to slavery 
here, who are ready and willing upon all proper occasions to assert 
and act upon them, who are perfectly acquainted with the subject, 
and with the temper of the people in this matter, should see all our 
hopes of finally eradicating this evil, spoiled and marred by the 
intemperance and folly, not to say wickedness, of those who are 
perfectly ignorant of the subject, its difficulties and dangers, but who 
ruin our chance of influence, by professing a common object with 
us. The object of all discussion on this subject, to do good here, 
should be, not to render the slaves discontented but to shew to the 
whites, of all classes, the baneful effects of the system upon them. 
It is perfectly obvious that slavery is a subject placed beyond the 
control of the General Government. It would therefore avail but 
little, so long as this Government lasts, if every man north of Mason 
and Dixon's line were deeply impressed with the impolicy, cruelty, 
injustice, or barbarity of slavery. That could not emancipate one 
wretch from bondage. " Emancipation " can never be effected with- 
out the consent of the slaveholders, and this can never be obtained 
by either abuse or threats. What we want is temperate argument, 
going to shew, the evils of slavery to ourselves, our posterity, and 
our country; the superiority in cheapness, convenience, and efficacy 
of free labor; then that the condition of the slave as well as the 
master would be improved by emancipation, and pointing out a 
mode in which this can be done safely without upturning at once all 
the foundations of society. Satisfy our people on these points and 
you will have thousands of converts to emancipation. The fact is 
. . . [abolition fanaticism] . . . paralizes our efforts. No friend 
of emancipation amongst us, cares to open his mouth on the sub- 
ject, for fear of being branded as an ally of Garrison, and of doing 
evil' instead of good to the cause he would advocate. 88 

Another Virginian, who would certainly not be included 
among her pro-slavery citizens, said of the Garrisonians : 

Upon no other point connected with slavery have I ever known 
such unanimity in Virginia. The feeling of all of every age, that 
think about it, is this. It is a subject with which you shall not inter- 
fere; except indeed by scolding and calling names at the distance 
of three hundred miles; and that if, through the just judgment of 
Providence on our land, you shall ever get Congress to act on this 
subject, that moment the Union is dissolved. 89 

88 Ibid., Edward Colston to Gurley, Martinsburg, Va., July 9, 1833. 

89 Letter to Washington Colonization Society, MS., W. M. Atkin- 
son to Polk, Washington, D. C, January 27, 1834. 



l6o THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Colonel Addison Hali thought in September, 1835, that the 
reaction against abolition excitement had become so strong 
in Virginia that " it paralizes all effort. It would not only 
be unsuccessful, but attended with personal danger." 80 
James Garland, a congressmen from the same State, who 
had in former years been an interested Colonizationist, 
was driven, by the exaggerations of Garrisonians, to be- 
come an opponent of even Colonization. In later years he 
resumed his interest in the Society, but against every Gar- 
risonion effort he stood distinctly pledged. 91 And his posi- 
tion on the subject of slavery became violently anti-Garri- 
sonian. A Methodist minister of New Orleans in 1838 
wrote that the reaction against ultra-Abolitionism had had 
a distinctly harmful effect upon the comfort of the slave, 
and had been destructive of sentiment favorable to emanci- 
pation. The results of the efforts of Colonizationists had 
been favorable to emancipation. 92 

Francis Scott Key thought that both the free negro and 
the slave, in all the Middle States, had been subjected to 
additional restraints directly as a result of the efforts of the 
Abolitionists. The efforts of these agitators he character- 
ized as "most unfortunate." 93 Elliot Cresson wrote from 
New Orleans : "... so morbid is the South from the rec- 
ollection of abolitionism, that it is scarcely credible how 
little will excite a storm." 94 There was a widespread com- 
plaint among the Colonization agents of the South, and 
among active Colonizationists of that section, that this anti- 
Garrison feeling had become so strong and so dangerous 
that the South had not only become less considerate of its 
slaves, but it had also begun to confuse abolition and colo- 
nization, looking upon the latter as "the A. B. C. of Aboli- 
tion." Thousands of Southerners were undoubtedly driven 



80 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Col. A. Hall to 
Gurley, Richmond, Va., September 3, 1835. 

91 African Repository, vol. xiv, pp. 43-47. 

92 Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 48-49. 

93 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 113 ff. 

94 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to 
Wilkeson, New Orleans, April 25, 1840. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION l6l 

to an extreme proslavery position as a result of Garrison's 
efforts. 95 

Mathew Carey, of Philadelphia, and Roger M. Sherman, 
of Connecticut, may be taken as men of standing and influ- 
ence in the sections from which they came. Both admitted 
the sincerity of the Garrisonians and at the same time both 
deplored the impolitic and injurious efforts that those aboli- 
tionists were making. Sherman was invited to attend the 
Anti-Slavery Convention in Albany, in 1839. ^ n his refusal 
to be present Sherman expressed very clearly his views : 

Had the Rev. Dr. Edwards, and others, who publicly espoused 
measures of emancipation adopted in Connecticut soon after the 
Revolutionary War, called slaveholders Man-Stealers, in staring 
capitals . . . would it not have excited, in the Northern Yankees, 
more of resentment than conviction, and less of compliance than 
opposition? The Southern people have felt, and to a great degree, 
justly, that the Abolitionists of the North were addressing their 
fears ; and not merely their understandings or consciences. They 
have been addressed in terms of opprobrious criminations rarely 
softened by the language of respect. This has made them inacces- 
sible, . . . and has, I fear, put off emancipation for at least half a 
century. . . . Could a missionary, thus addressing civilized heathen, 
hope for a favourable audience? 96 

As representatives of the West, both Henry Clay and 
Elisha Whittlesey thought that the Garrisonians had done 
incalculable injury to both the white man and the slave, and 
even to the free negro. 97 A Colonization agent, Rev. M. 
M. Henkle, working in Ohio, summed up the results of 
Abolitionism as follows : "... contributing say $50,000 
pr. annum to inflame the passions of the North, wake the 
resentments of the South, fetter more firmly the bonds of 

95 Ibid., Wilkeson to Rev. T. B. Barto, March 27, 1840, No. 100; 
W. McKinney to McLain, New Bern, N. C, April 15, 1840; J. B. 
O'Neall to Wilkeson, Springfield, S. G, March 6, 1841 ; Wm. Crab- 
tree to Wilkeson, Savannah, Ga., March io, 1841 ; Gurley to R. S. 
Marvin, February 7, 1842, No. 582. 

96 African Repository, vol. xv, pp. 242-244; Letters of American 
Colonization Society, MS., Carey to Gurley, Philadelphia, Decem- 
ber 22, 1829. 

97 African Repository, vol. xii, pp. 10-12; Letters of American 
Colonization Society, MS., Whittlesey to Wilkeson, Canfield, Ohio, 
March 16, 1840. 

11 



1 62 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the slave, and strain the tender ligaments of the political 
Union, to the last stretch of endurance. . . ." 98 

The most conclusive and interesting proof that Coloni- 
zation had an influence beneficial and pronounced upon 
public sentiment at the South, and particularly upon slave- 
holders, is contained in a study of emancipations that were 
brought about by the influence of the Society." But — and 
on this point present day writers have failed to do justice 
to the Society in their estimates of its importance — the effect 
upon public opinion is not to be measured alone in the num- 
ber of emancipations effected or the size of the colony estab- 
lished. By far the most important influence the organiza- 
tion exerted prior to 1845 was its influence upon public 
opinion on the question of slavery. That influence was 
positive, though in large measure intangible and immaterial. 

That between 1830 and 1840 the Colonizationists were 
drawing public sentiment, from New Orleans to Vermont, 
to a common view of the best solution of the whole negro 
problem, there is abundant evidence. In 1832 Dr. John 
Ker reported a large part of the most prominent political 
figures of Louisiana favorable to the colonization mode of 
dealing with slavery and the free negro. 100 In the same 
year, the Colonizationists were making their way into the 
confidence and were gaining the support of important offi- 
cials in Virginia. 101 In 1834 there were still citizens of 
Vermont who were willing and anxious to meet their breth- 
ren from New Orleans, and settle the slavery question on 
the terms proposed by the Colonizationists. 102 In 1837, a 
joint committee of the Illinois legislature unanimously ap- 
proved the colonization method, as had the officials of 
Louisiana and the citizens of Vermont. The Colonization 
societies, in their opinion, "were silently, but surely winning 

98 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Henkle to 
Gurley, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 18, 1838. 

99 See chapter below on Colonization and Emancipation, passim. 

100 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Ker to Gur- 
ley, New Orleans, April 4, 1832. 

101 Ibid., Atkinson to Gurley, Petersburg, Va., July 27, 1832. 

102 African Repository, vol. x, p. 148. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 63 

their way upon public opinion, and entwining powerfully 
around the affections of the people." As to the Abolition- 
ists, they "have forged new irons for the black man, and 
added an hundred fold to the rigor of slavery. They have 
scattered the firebrands of discord and disunion among the 
different states of the confederacy." The Colonization 
scheme was their choice. 103 In 1838 the Southern Literary 
Messenger was satisfied with the Colonization scheme as 
being the "juste milieu," "the bread platform upon which 
the friends of this unhappy race may meet in soberness and 
safety." 104 And in 1840 the committee of the Pennsylvania 
Legislature, to which the matter had been referred, reported 
colonization to be, in their opinion, "the only mode by which 
an equality of rights can be secured to that unfortunate race 
[the negro]." 105 

Next, as to the results of Abolition and Colonization upon 
those religious bodies whose influence and organization ex- 
tended throughout the Union. It has already been seen 
that before the rise of Garrisonism, there was great una- 
nimity of sentiment in favor of Colonization among nearly 
all religious denominations. Again and again the Metho- 
dist church passed resolutions in its national gatherings 
warmly recommending the cause to the attention of its min- 
istry. The same was true of the Presbyterian and of the 
Baptist churches. But as has also been seen, one of the 
most significant changes of sentiment brought about by Gar- 
rison's efforts was the change in the position New England 
churches took between 183 1 and 1845. In 183 1 public 
opinion was being led by sentiment in the churches ; in 1845 
public opinion was leading sentiment in the churches. 

A study of the division of the Methodist church, 1844- 
1845, is °f peculiar interest as exhibiting this change of sen- 
timent that had been going on at the North. In 1834 a 
Methodist Conference, sitting at New Haven, Connecticut, 

103 Ibid., vol. xiii, pp. 109-111. 

104 Ibid., vol. xiv, p. 308. 

105 Ibid., vol. xvi, pp. 136-137- 



164 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

recommended the Colonization movement, and deplored the 
opposition of the Abolitionists, as "directly calculated to 
injure the best interest of colored men, whether bond or 
free/' and also calculated to have the " most unfavorable 
results " upon the progress of Christian principles. 106 And 
yet, just ten years later, the organization of the Methodist 
church was rent in twain, and the territory from Maryland 
to the Gulf of Mexico came under the jurisdiction of the 
Southern Methodist Church. There has been much dis- 
cussion upon the causes of that division; but the leading 
cause seems to the writer to be almost obvious, when viewed 
in the light of the attitude each section of that church took 
toward the Abolition and Colonization societies. It is uni- 
versally admitted that the question of slavery was almost 
the sole cause of the disruption of that church. But was 
it the attitude of the Northern Methodists or of the South- 
ern Methodists that brought about the division? In 1834 
united Methodism was very favorable to the Colonization 
scheme. In 1845 tne Southern Methodists were still favor- 
able to it ; but the Northern Methodists had come so far 
under the influence of Garrison, or they had been so far 
carried away from their position of ten years before by the 
tide of public sentiment, that, either because the majority 
of Northern Methodists had become Garrisonian or at least 
aggressively Abolitionist, or else because so strong a mi- 
nority of them had gone over to that party, they forced the 
Northern majority by a threat of secession from them and 
secured the passage of a resolution whose effect was prac- 
tically to suspend a Southern Bishop who had inherited two 
slaves. 

The fact is that the Southern Methodist Church in 1845 
retained the same good feeling for Colonization that it had 
in 1835 ; but the Northern section of Methodism had been 
borne away on the tide of Abolitionism. Whatever may be 
said about the legal forms the separation took, and whether 
by the acts of separation the Southerners seceded from the 

106 Ibid., vol. x, p. 127. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 65 

general body or the general body seceded from the South- 
erners, or whether the separation was completely by agree- 
ment — neither church seceding, but both agreeing peaceably 
to separate — it is nevertheless a matter of fact that in terms 
of ultimate and real causes, the Northern Methodists 
changed radically their views while those of the Southern 
Methodists remained practically what they had been in 
1834. In 1835 Dotn Northern and Southern Methodists 
were, as a body, opposed to radical Abolitionism. In 1845 
the Southern Methodists were still opposed to it ; while the 
majority, or a commanding minority of the Methodists of 
the North had become favorable to it. In 1835 Northern 
and Southern Methodists warmly recommended the Colo- 
nization Society. In 1845 it was the Southern church that 
warmly recommended it. That year the Mississippi Con- 
ference of the Southern Methodist Church unanimously 
adopted a resolution commending the cause of Coloni- 
zation. 107 

Northern Methodists had been drawn away from their 
former ground by the tide of public sentiment; Southern 
Methodists remained where they had stood ten years be- 
fore. And George F. Pierce, later Bishop Pierce, was right 
in declaring at the General Conference of 1844: "The diffi- 
culties are with the New Englanders. They are making 
all this difficulty. . . ." 108 Indeed, the Northern section of 
the church had gone so rapidly to the position of the Aboli- 
tionists that they were ahead of the regulations of their 
book of discipline. There had been no disciplinary rule 
adopted by which a slaveholding bishop could be suspended 
from the exercise of his functions ; and the resolution of 
suspension was adopted largely, it seems, as a matter of 
expediency, to prevent the secession of the whole of New 
England Methodism. 103 Either because of its own convic- 
tions, or to save to itself New England Methodism, the 

107 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Pinney to Mc- 
Lain, New Orleans, December 13, 1845 ; December 14, 1845. 

108 G. G. Smith, Life and Times of George F. Pierce, chap. vi. 
i°9 Ibid. 



1 66 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Methodist Episcopal Church changed its attitude and thus 
abandoned the ground it had held in common with Southern 
Methodism. 110 Few Virginians in 1846 were more ardent 
Colonizationists than Bishop John Early, president of the 
Petersburg Colonization Society. And that year both bishops 
of the Southern Church were Colonizationists, 111 as were 
leading Southern Methodist ministers, like William Winans 
of Mississippi, or John E. Edwards of Richmond. 

One can without difficulty recognize the meat upon which 
the New Hampshire minister fed who, in advocating the 
resolution which brought about the division of the Metho- 
dist Church, declared : " Men-buyers are exactly on a level 
with men-stealers." 112 That was not the spirit of Coloniza- 
tion; it was the spirit of Garrisonian Abolition. It rent in 
twain other religious bodies. And it was because Garri- 
sonian Abolition was fundamentally and essentially destruc- 
tive of economic, social, political, and religious national 
unity. The influence of Colonization was exactly the re- 
verse. We have seen its unifying influence in our study 
of its effect upon the public opinion of the United States. 
It was so in society. It was distinctly so in the church. 

Finally, in comparing the methods and results of Garri- 
sonian Abolition and the Colonization Society, it may be 
interesting to look for a while at the interchange of views 
that was taking place among Colonization leaders, and see 
how far those views will aid us in refuting the oft-repeated 
charges of the Garrisonians that, after all, Colonization was 
an enormous obstacle in the way of emancipation, and that 
its ally was the slaveholder. 

As early as 1828 Elliot Cresson was urging upon the Sec- 
retary of the Colonization Society the importance of hearty 
cooperation between the Abolitionists and Colonization- 

110 African Repository, vol. xix, p. 252. 

111 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., T. C. Benning 
to McLain, Petersburg, Va., May 5, 1846; Rev. J. E. Edwards, Rich- 
mond, Va., May 25, 1846. 

112 Smith, p. 123. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 67 

ists. 113 In 1831 one of the largest contributors to the So- 
ciety in Kentucky was a man who had liberated his slaves 
and for five years refused to eat with a slaveholder, espe- 
cially if he were a Methodist. 114 Robert J. Breckenridge, 
of Kentucky, had made great sacrifice of reputation in 
order to aid the Colonization Society to hasten the day of 
general emancipation in his State. 115 William M. Black- 
ford, a leader among Colonizationists of Eastern Virginia, 
expressed himself as follows on the subject of slavery: 

We have had reason to curse slavery within the last day or two, 
from a painful exemplification of it's evils occurring under our own 
eyes. A year ago I bought [and therefore, by the reasoning of the 
Abolitionists, he was a man-stealer] a negro woman from a trader, 
to prevent her separation from her husband. She was truly grati- 
fied and has made' us a faithful servant ever since. Her husband 
belonged to an estate. In dividing if, a sale became necessary, and 
without letting me know of it, he was sold to a trader. He was 
seized on the streets, handcuffed, and then permitted to take leave 
of his wife. He entered our yard, crying, and presented himself 
in that situation to his wife, who had not the remotest idea of such 
an event. I leave you to imagine the feelings of his wife — and also 
of Mrs. B[lackford]. It has prayed upon the latter's mind very- 
much, and will, I fear, make her sick. The man was addicted to 
drink, but was civil and industrious, and made an affectionate hus- 
band. But I needn't pain you by reflections on this subject. 116 

J. Burton Harrison expressed the hope of Colonization- 
ists generally when he wrote : " I am firmly persuaded that 
Kentucky is the most hopeful of all the slaveholding States 
(let me call them 'transition' States which seem not de- 
voted to slavery in perpetuity, as Maryland, Virginia, Ken- 
tucky, and perhaps others) except Maryland." 117 A letter 
which is typical of scores of letters that were sent out to 
the Society's friends from the central office, contains the 
following: "We must if possible start a ship next month. 
About 40 liberated slaves are now waiting and must be sent 

113 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to 
Gurley, Philadelphia, August 23, 1828. 

114 Ibid., Finley to Gurley, Winchester, Ky., June 8, 1831. 

115 Ibid., R. J. Breckenridge to Gurley, Lexington, Ky., August 

116 Ibid., W. M. Blackford to Gurley, Fredericksburg, Va., Octo- 
ber 4, 1832. 

117 Ibid., Harrison to Gurley, New Orleans, May 16, 1833. 



1 68 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

or sold for the South!" 118 John McDonogh, one of the 
foremost Colonizationists of Louisiana, sought from the 
legislature of that State permission to educate his slaves — 
for it was against the law for him to do so without obtain- 
ing permission from the legislature. He owned slaves 
valued at $150,000.00, and it was his purpose to colonize 
them all in Liberia, as they gave evidence of the ability to 
care for themselves. 119 Gerrit Smith, who would hardly be, 
by any student of Abolition, accused of pro-slavery leaning, 
wrote, in 1828, concerning the alarm among slaveholders 
suspicious of the Colonization Society : " I must think that 
our slaveholders are causelessly alarmed at the American 
Colonization Society." 120 He realized perfectly well that 
the sympathetic attitude the Society assumed in its official 
journal towards the slaveholder was assumed, not out of a 
love for slavery, but out of a belief that the only way to 
persuade the slaveholder to emancipate his slaves was to 
secure first his friendship and respect and, as a result, the 
liberation of his slaves. 121 

Of course it was no difficult matter for the Abolitionists 
to take these very sympathetic utterances and build up a 
conclusive argument setting forth the base motives of Colo- 
nizationists. And they did so, although the motive that 
they " proved " was exactly the opposite of that which the 
Colonizationists actually had. What was used as a bait to 
to secure the liberation of slaves was pictured by the Garri- 
sonians to be the outcropping of the evil spirit back of the 
scheme. And yet a fair statement of its position was fre- 
quently made to the public in the African Repository. For 
instance, in 1830 it was there stated: "That the system of 
slavery must exist temporarily in this country, we as firmly 

118 Ibid., McLain to Mrs. Ann Richardson, November 14, 1840. 

119 African Repository, vol. x, p. 24. 

120 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Smith to Gur- 
ley, November 17, 1828. 

121 Ibid., Smith to Gurley, Peterboro, N. Y., Feb. 6, 1831. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 69 

believe, as that for its existence a single moment, there can 
be offered justly no plea but necessity." 122 

It was reasonably conclusive proof both of the sincerity 
of the Society and of the effectiveness of its methods that 
Francis Scott Key, appealing to Philadelphia for funds, re- 
ported that more than six hundred slaves were at that time 
offered by slaveholders on the condition of their removal to 
Liberia, and that only the funds were needed to secure their 
immediate liberation. 123 

While the appointment of Dr. Ezekiel Skinner as colonial 
agent was under consideration, he thought wise to make 
clear his position on the subject of slavery. It was this: 

I have ever held slavery in abomination as the blackest of the 
black catalogue of human crimes, the criminality of which is not in 
the least lessened by the authority of human laws and which will 
carry the souls of those who are guilty of this crime before the 
bar of God blacker with moral pollution than the skins of those 
whom they unjustly held in bondage. 

I am friendly to the Colonization Society as presenting the only 
means now with [in] our power to emancipate many whom we have 
reason to believe would otherwise die in slavery. 124 

This statement caused neither a withdrawal of his appoint- 
ment nor criticism of his position. 

At the annual meeting of the Society in 1834, Brecken- 
ridge thus stated the position of Colonizationists in their 
relation to the slaveholder: "We stand in the breach for 
him, to keep off the Abolitionists. We are his friends, but 
only to give him time. . . . And if he attempts to maintain 
slavery as perpetual, every one of us will be upon him too." 
At the same meeting Gerrit Smith reviewed several of the 
charges made against the Society, among which was the 
charge that there were at that time 265,000 persons " now 
in slavery, who would have been free if it had not been for 
the influence of this Society."' A second charge was that 
all colonies whatever on the Coast of Africa went to sup- 

128 African Repository, vol. v, pp. 328-330; Letters of American 
Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Fendall, New York, Novem- 
ber 4, 1833. 

123 African Repository, vol. vi, pp. 138-139. 

124 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., E. Skinner to 
Gurley, Ashford, Conn., January 23, 1834. 



170 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

port, rather than suppress the slave trade. In its review 
of the speech, The Liberator maintained that both these 
charges were true. 125 It is an interesting fact that at that 
meeting it was a resident of Connecticut who urged the 
Society to confine its efforts chiefly to the transportation of 
free blacks, touching the question of slavery and emancipa- 
tion as lightly as possible; and it was a resident of Mary- 
land who urged that it concentrate its efforts upon trans- 
porting to the colony slaves emancipated for that express 
purpose — in short, that it become more pronouncedly a 
society whose purpose was the liberation of slaves. 

Dr. Reese, one of the most prominent members of the 
New York City Colonization Society, thus expressed him- 
self on his attitude towards slavery : " Sir, I abhor slavery, 
and therefore am I a friend of Colonization. . . . If slavery 
should not eventually, under the influence of kindness and 
confidence, be abolished, it would be because the visionaries 
of the North would prevent it." 126 

If there was ever a time when the Colonizationists were 
unscrupulously assailed from both the press and the plat- 
form of the Garrisonians, that time was from 1831 to 1840. 
R. R. Gurley, Secretary of the Society, saw more and knew 
more of that storm than did any other individual. During 
that period the Society's purposes were continually misrep- 
resented, and Gurley knew, for he directed, the movements 
and efforts of the organization. In a number of personal 
letters written to members of the Board of Managers dur- 
ing this period, Gurley sets forth clearly both his own views 
and the views of those Colonizationists with whom he 
talked as he traveled for the Society from Massachusetts 
to Georgia. 

Of the influence of colonization in Maryland he writes: 
" In Maryland, the spirit of Colonization is increasing 
among the slaveholders and no difficulty is experienced in 

125 The Liberator, Feb. 8, 1834. Here will be found an account 
of the speeches made at this important meeting of the Society. 

126 Ibid., May 24, 1834. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I7I 

procuring emigrants of the best character, out of the city 
of Balto." 127 Of his hopes for Virginia he writes : " I trust 
Virginia will receive the special attention of the Board. 
Let her voice be with us ; let her consent that Congress shall 
appropriate money to colonisation and we have triumphed 
— slavery will go down with the consent of the South, and 
the Union will be preserved." 128 And again : " The people 
of the South must look to the Colonization policy as to the 
sheet anchor of their safety. Can they be so blind as not 
to see or so destitute of wisdom as not to prepare for the 
gathering storm? Can the South be induced to propose 
and support Colonization as a National measure looking to 
the final abolition of slavery? Will Virginia lead in the 
scheme? If so, all is safe." 129 Or again: "Let it be ours 
to bind together all the moderate and sober friends of Lib- 
erty and Africa in the Union." 130 After a journey into 
Louisiana and Mississippi, where several large bequests had 
recently been made for the Society, he commented : " Each 
successive year, hereafter, will bequests to our Institution 
be multiplying and increasing, thousands of slaves will be 
placed under the protection of the Society, and all motives 
concur to urge us to adopt all proper methods ... to en- 
able us to secure such bequests and the freedom and colo- 
nization of such slaves, as may be entrusted to our care." 131 
Kentucky, he thought, had proved a profitable field for 
Colonization effort, and he believed that the result was a 
rapidly growing disposition among her slaveholders to lib- 
erate their slaves, on condition of their emigration to the 
colony. 132 

Whether or not the very advocacy of gradual emancipa- 
tion was of itself a hindrance to immediate emancipation 
there might be, and doubtless was wide difference of opin- 

127 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to 
Fendall, Boston, August 3, 1835. 

128 Ibid., Gurley to Gales, Boston, Oct. 3, 1835. 

129 Ibid., confidential, Gurley to Fendall, Boston, October 7, 1835. 

130 Ibid., Gurley to Gales, Philadelphia, December 12, 1835. 

131 Ibid., Gurley to Gales, Louisville, Ky., July 25, 1836. 

132 Ibid., Gurley to Fendall, Athens, Ga., June 7, 1837. 



172 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

ion. If Abolitionists had urged this as the inevitable result 
of any scheme of gradual emancipation, the Colonizationists 
could have had no just quarrel. Such a question might 
have been threshed out on the battleground of reason. The 
great blunder the Garrisonians made was not in arguing 
that the tendency of Colonization was necessarily to put off 
the hoped-for day, but that it was the deliberate purpose of 
Colonizationists to put off that day. There have been 
found, among the records of the Colonization Society, prior 
to 1846, two letters which go to show that the members of 
one auxiliary Colonization Society, in Tennessee, and a 
number of lukewarm friends of the cause in Alabama based 
their support of Colonization upon the ground, either of its 
usefulness as an ally of the slaveholder, in removing the 
distracting free blacks from the possibility of their influence 
over the slaves, or of its usefulness in relieving a section 
undoubtedly burdened with free blacks. 133 And the writer 
of the letter from Alabama understood well enough the true 
objects of Colonizationists, to accuse his neighbors of 
" Machiavelism." Voluminous evidence, forsooth, upon 
which to make out a case for the Garrisonians ! 

It would not be difficult to show that there were cases in 
which the Garrisonians themselves prevented emancipa- 
tions. In 1839, for instance, a Colonization agent was ap- 
proached by a Kentucky slaveholder, who desired to eman- 
cipate his twenty slaves, giving them five hundred dollars, 
on condition of their willingness to go to Liberia. Upon 
invitation, the agent addressed the slaves and secured their 
consent to go. But the next morning they had all, save one, 
changed their minds. The cause of this change the master 
attributed (1) to the influence of the Garrisonians, who 
continually reminded the slaves that the Colonizationists 
desired to " banish " them, or to " expatriate " them, and 
(2) to the rumors that had come to them of violent cases 
of seasickness and deaths, which, with the rest, the Garri- 

133 Ibid., H.A.Wise to Gurley, Nashville, Term., January 9, 1830; 
W. C. Dennis to Gurley, Blakeley, Ala., December 21, 1838. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION I 73 

sonians did not hesitate to publish. 134 In 1840 the executor 
of Thomas Hall of Virginia who, by his will liberated some 
twenty-five of his slaves — each to be given twenty-five dol- 
lars if he agreed to go to the colony, and those refusing to 
go to revert to slavery — in reporting those who desired to 
emigrate, expressed his desire to go about through the com- 
munity and solicit from his neighbors subscriptions to in- 
crease the allowance of the negroes who were about to 
leave ; but he was prevented from doing so "by the wretched 
policy of the abolitionists," who had "created a prejudice 
against even colonization here, that threatens all hope of 
carrying on its operations south of Mason and Dixon's line. 
A man is in danger of being charged with a leaning to aboli- 
tion if he advances Colonization." 135 

Such examples could be multiplied many times, and yet, 
it would be manifestly unfair to argue that the Garrisonians 
were opponents of emancipation. The charges of the Gar- 
risonians were every whit as unfair. There were those in 
Kentucky who believed that, but for the extreme and radi- 
cal opposition of the Abolitionists to Colonization, Ken- 
tucky would by 1840 have been practically ready to pass a 
general emancipation law. And of a large number of slaves 
owned by Mr. Black of Tennessee, and offered to the So- 
ciety upon certain conditions, but who had fallen into the 
hands of ill-disposed heirs and sold to the Southwest, Sec- 
retary McLain wrote: "We begged hard for them but the 
country did not respond and now they are beyond our reach 
— and involved in perpetual slavery." 136 May it not be 
asked whether some of the money used in spreading base- 
less slanders against the Colonization Society might not 
profitably have been used in contributions to that Society, 
to secure the liberation of proffered slaves? 

A leading minister of Mississippi declared, in New York, 
that the Colonization Society had had a tremendous influ- 

134 Ibid., G. W. Fagg to Wilkeson, Elizabethtown, Ky., Septem- 
ber 19, 1839. 

135 Ibid., E. Broadus to Wilkeson, Culpeper, Va., August II, 1840. 

136 Ibid., Cresson, Washington, June 3, 1844. 



174 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

ence in preparing the way for the opening of the door of a 
gradual, but complete emancipation in that State, but that 
the rise of rabid Garrisonism had been one of the foremost 
agents in closing " every door that had been opened for the 
escape of the slave. . . ." 137 A plain miller of eastern Vir- 
ginia, not troubled with the " too liberal construction " fears 
of his more learned fellow citizens, wrote to the Society, 
requesting the transportation of his family of six slaves, 
and expressed the opinion that, if the federal government 
and the Abolitionists would cooperate with Colonizationists, 
they could " heal a disease that, if not arrested, is likely to 
dissolve the Union." 138 From these evidences it seems clear 
that among the results of Garrisonian Abolition in the 
South are to be mentioned not only a change very unfavor- 
able to voluntary emancipation, but also a large number of 
instances of actual prevention of immediate emancipation. 
And yet it would obviously do violence to the true interpre- 
tation of the Garrisonian faith to accuse its representatives 
of hostility to the immediate emancipation of slaves. 

J. G. Birney, at this time an agent of the Colonization 
Society and soon to become Abolitionist, gives an interest- 
ing summary of his view on prospects in the South. These 
views are entitled to considerable weight, in the light of 
Birney's later prominence in political abolition and his place 
in the Liberal Party. In 1833, he wrote, of the prospects 
of getting rid of slavery in the slaveholding States : 

The only effectual way that seems open to my view, is the with- 
drawing of Virginia from the Slave States, by her adoption of some 
scheme of emancipation. Should this be done, the whole system of 
slavery in the U. S. would, upon the very pressure of public opinion, 
be brought, and that in a few years, in shivers to the ground. In 
proportion as the slaveholding territory is weakened in political 
influence, it will be weakened in the power of withstanding the force 
of public sentiment; and the last State in which slavery shall exist 
. . . will ... be perfectly odious. (The proceedings of the Aboli- 
tionists of the North have a very injurious effect here — they seem 
to furnish a kind of justification of slavery itself to the Southern 
slaveholders. I assure you, sir, I have nothing left but hope for 

137 African Repository, vol. xx, p. 183. 

138 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., John Gray to 
McLain, Fredericksburg, Va., January 27, 1845. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 175 

the South. By the word South, I mean South — Ala., Misst'., Loua. 
In 20 years they must be overrun by the blacks. There is no escape 
but in doing that, which, I am almost certain, will not be done.) 
What I would now suggest, would be to press with every energy 
upon Maryland, Virga. and Ky. for emancipation and colonization. 
If Virga. be not detached from the number of slaveholding States, 
the slavery question must inevitably dissolve the Union, and that 
before very long. Should she leave them, the Union will be safe, 
tho' the suffering of the South will be almost unto death. ... I 
greatly approve of your opinion, that " for some years, at least, the 
North should forbear," that everything that looks like relief for 
the South may be attempted. 139 

Two and a half months later he wrote again : 

I do not believe, that anything effectual can be done South oi 
Tennessee. In the spirit of emancipation which the colonization 
cause has produced, the planters of the South see that it does affect 
the subject of slavery. This they are determined not to have 
touched in any way. It' is my sincere belief that the South — at 
least that part of it in which I have been operating has, within the 
last year, become very manifestly, more and more indurated upon 
the subject of slavery. 140 

It was precisely this hope of winning the Middle States, 
that continued to permit slavery, and thus to win its way 
further and further down into the lower South, all the while 
making whatever efforts it could in the newer Southwestern 
States, that actuated the Colonization Society. With Vir- 
ginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee among the free 
States, the pressure of public opinion and the futility of 
physical opposition would make the entire Union some day, 
without a national upheaval, free from the blight of slavery. 
In the language of Francis Scott Key : " No slave State 
adjacent to a free State can continue so." 141 It was always 
in these " adjacent " States that the condition of the slaves 
was least undesirable, and hence, in which the accusations of 
the Garrisonians were most unfounded in fact. It was here 
also that the influence of the Garrisonians reached most 
directly, and where the reaction against both Abolition and 
Colonization, on account of the Abolitionists, was, if not 
more defiant, nevertheless most destructive. 

If the sincerity of the Colonization cause, which the Gar- 

139 Ibid., Birney to Gurley, Huntsville, Ala., September 14, 1833. 

140 Ibid., Birney to Gurley, Danville, Ky., December 3, 1833. 

141 See above. 



I76 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

risonians charged with hypocrisy, has not yet been conclu- 
sively set forth, no more convincing documents could be 
recommended to the consideration of the investigator than 
the lengthy and comprehensive letter of Birney, on his sev- 
ering his connection with the Colonization movement to 
become an Anti-Slavery leader, or a similarly lengthy and 
comprehensive letter of Gerrit Smith, just a short while 
before he also went over to the Anti-Slavery party. Bir- 
ney's objection was not founded upon the discovery of any 
deviation from the straight line of an altogether laudable 
policy to place the free negro in a position where he would 
not be held down by the shackles of prejudice and, by peace- 
able means, to bring about the ultimate and entire abolition 
of slavery, but upon the belief that : " There is not in colo- 
nization any principle, or quality, or constituent substance 
fitted so to tell upon the hearts and minds of men as to 
ensure continued and persevering action." 142 And the let- 
ter of Gerrit Smith contains one of the most exhaustive, 
eloquent, and comprehensive defences of the motives of the 
leaders of the Society that has been presented to the public. 
His objection was not based upon any discovery of the 
slightest proslavery designs or feelings among those leaders, 
but upon the objection, in many respects the very opposite 
of that given by Garrisonians, that the Society had been 
neglectful of the American negro who was already free. 143 
It was a great struggle, that between the Garrisonians and 
the Colonizationists. Verily, it was the first American civil 
war on the subject of slavery. For ten years it raged. The 
outbreak of it was due to Garrison and his confederates and, 
from first to last, it was a defensive contest from the point 
of view of the Colonization Society. When it began, the 
States were divided into three comparatively distinct sec- 
tions, the New England, the Middle, and the Southern. 
The Middle States extended from New York on the North 
to North Carolina on the South. There were three pre- 

142 The Liberator, August 16, 1834. 

143 Ibid., January 24, 1835. 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 77 

vailing opinions. In the New England section, it was the 
Abolition sentiment, in the Middle section, it was the Colo- 
nization sentiment ; in the Southern section, it was the posi- 
tive pro-slavery sentiment. The outcome of that struggle 
is of deep significance; for when the end of it had come, 
the middle section had disappeared, so far as its importance 
as a "buffer state" of public sentiment is concerned. 
Henceforth there was to be a North and a South. 

Striking evidence of this is seen on the one hand in the 
fact that as early as an annual meeting of the Society in 
1834, the delegates from Pennsylvania and New York had 
thrown many of their former moderate views to the winds 
and were definitely antislavery ; and on the other hand, the 
fact that the North Carolina Manumission Society founded 
in 1816 and, by 1825, boasting of fifty-eight auxiliaries and 
1600 members, and the sympathy of probably a majority of 
the citizens of that State, founded with the avowed and 
definite purpose of freeing North Carolina slaves, held its 
last meeting in 1834, and failed in no small measure because 
of the revolt of North Carolinians from any thing that in 
the least savored of a Garrisonian program. 144 

Under able business management and an efficient corps of 
agents and advertisers, Colonization was to continue to do 
an important work; but the character of that work had 
changed. The struggle waged by the Abolitionists had 
made quite improbable, in the minds of the mass of Ameri- 
cans, the solution of the negro problem by the colonization 
plan. Many thousands of dollars were still to be contrib- 
uted ; but the contribution was made rather as an aid to the 
establishment of a model negro republic in Africa, whose 
effect would be to discourage the slave-trade, and encourage 
energy and thrift among those free negroes from the United 
States who chose to emigrate, and to give native Africans 
a demonstration of the advantages of civilization. In short, 
the eyes of Colonizationists were in great measure turned 
from a Southern slave system to a Republic of Liberia. 

144 University of North Carolina Magazine, vol. xiv, No. 4, p. 221. 
12 



I78 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Colonization continued to have a wide influence in almost 
every part of the country. But it ceased to have a con- 
trolling influence in any part of the country. The Aboli- 
tionists had enlisted those who were to be henceforth pro- 
Northern advocates ; and it had definitely alienated the rest 
of those who had once been moderate. In a word, the Gar- 
risonians had done much dangerously to divide the Union 
into two opposing sections whose sentiments were in the 
days to come little tempered by so moderate and unifying 
and healing a sentiment as that held by Colonizationists. 
From the point of view of its influence upon the subject of 
slavery Garrison undoubtedly won his fight, and in doing 
so, he was the forerunner and one of the leading " irrepres- 
sible" causes of the "irrepressible" conflict. Many be- 
quests were yet to be made to the Society, many slaves were 
yet offered their freedom on condition of emigration, many 
efforts were yet made by those patriots, proponents of Colo- 
nization, to hold the Union together, and the Colonization 
Society lived on, doing a commendable work ; but the char- 
acter of its work was fundamentally changed by the con- 
flict which began in 1831, and whose influence was actively 
alive as late as 1845, though the struggle for supremacy may 
be said to have come to an end. 

By 1842 Garrison was calling the roll of his ultra- 
Abolitionist co-workers, and he noted the absence of most 
of them. " The time was," said he, " when Arthur Tappan 
stood deservedly conspicuous before the nation as an aboli- 
tionist, . . . ; but where is he now ? " " Where is James G. 
Birney? In Western retiracy, waiting to be elected Presi- 
dent of the United States, that he may have an opportunity 
to do something for the abolition of slavery." " Where is 
Henry B. Stanton? Studying law, (which crushes human- 
ity, and is hostile to the gospel of Christ,) and indulging the 
hope of one day or other, by the aid of the Liberty party, 
occupying a seat in Congress. . . ." "Where are Theo- 
dore D. Weld and his wife, and Sarah M. Grimke?" 
"Where is Amos G. Phelps? ... He is a petty priest, of 



COLONIZATION AND ABOLITION 1 79 

a petty parish, located in East Boston. What a fall ! " 
" Where is Elizur Wright, Jr., once a flame of fire . . . ? 
Absorbed in selling some French fables which he has trans- 
lated into English ! ' Et tu, Brute ! ' "' " Where is John G. 
Whittier?" " Where is Daniel Wise?" " Where is Orange 
Scott . . . ? Morally defunct." And so on, through a list 
of seventeen names, on all which the African Repository 
commented : " He could not name ten others, who, in the 
days of his greatest success, were equally efficient in his 
service." 145 What was the trouble ? Why had these flames 
gone out? Perhaps, New Englanders, the wisest of them, 
were coming to see the futility of blatant Garrisonism. 

145 African Repository, vol. xviii, pp. 327-329- 



CHAPTER IV 

Colonization and Emancipation, 1817-1850 

A study of the operations of the American Colonization 
Society, if it is to set forth fairly and completely the Colo- 
nization movement, must present the efforts of that organi- 
zation from two distinct points of view: (1) its effects and 
results in relation to the question of slavery, and (2) the 
degree of its success in establishing upon the west coast of 
Africa an asylum for the American free negro, or the 
American slave manumitted or emancipated with a view 
to emigration to the Society's settlements, and for Africans 
recaptured from slave vessels and restored to their native 
land. In a consideration of its bearings upon the solution 
of the problem of slavery, no more important topic can be 
discussed than the influence of the Society in encouraging 
a spirit in the South favorable to emancipation. An accu- 
rate estimate of that influence is as difficult as it is impor- 
tant. Records of emancipations or manumissions are so 
incomplete and unsatisfactory that no summary can be 
made which will be at once exhaustive and analytical. If 
every slaveholder who emancipated his blacks told us 
whether he did so as the result of a distinct influence ex- 
erted by the Society, the problem would be much simplified. 
But frequently the emancipator discussed but briefly the 
influences that led to the freeing of his slaves. In many 
cases he, himself, was probably unable to analyze those 
influences. Perhaps he had been led to give his negroes 
their freedom because he lived in a community where eman- 
cipation was " in the air." And perhaps that was the influ-_ 
ence of the Colonization Society at work. Influence cannot 
be measured with a yard stick; and it is exceedingly diffi- 
cult to measure it at all. 

180 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION l8l 

A further difficulty is found in the fact that several no- 
tices might appear in either the official minutes or the offi- 
cial journal, the investigator being unable to tell whether 
the notices referred to are notices of the same or of different 
cases of emancipation. The result is likely to be a confu- 
sion of estimates. 

It has already been pointed out 1 that, from the hour of 
its organization, indeed, before that hour, it was hoped that 
one of the important influences colonization might exert 
would be that in favor of the gradual and entire abolition 
of slavery, through its influence in favor of voluntary eman- 
cipation. At an early date William Thornton had already 
expressed the desire and the hope that it might " afford the 
best hope yet presented of putting an end to the slavery in 
which not less than 600,000 unhappy negroes are now in- 
volved." He foresaw the day when conditions in the South 
would bring about the enactment of laws prohibiting eman- 
cipations, unless accompanied with a provision for removal 
from the state. 2 Before the Colonization Society was a 
year old, the Manumission Society of North Carolina had 
become interested in cooperating with it, and after ten years' 
observation of its influence in favor of the emancipation of 
slaves, warmly recommended it and pledged its own sup- 
port. 3 In a memorial presented to Congress in 1819, a com- 
mittee, composed of two Virginians, John Mason and Gen- 
eral Walter Jones, one Marylander, Francis Scott Key, and 
one member from the District of Columbia, Dr. E. B. Cald- 
well, expressed the view that if Colonization resulted in the 
complete abolition of slavery, "Who can doubt that of all 
the blessings we may be permitted to bequeath to our de- 
scendants, this will receive the richest tribute of their thanks 
and veneration." 4 

1 See above. 
. 2 Thornton Papers, MS., vol. xiv, MSS. Div., Library of Cong. 

3 Journal of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., September 19, 1817; Manumission Society of North 
Carolina to American Colonization Society, MS., September 17, 1827. 

4 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., December 10, 1819. 



1 82 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

The Managers, in their annual report in 1820, declared, 
" the hope of the gradual and utter abolition of slavery, in 
a manner consistent with the rights, interests, and happiness 
of society, ought never to be abandoned." 5 In their annual 
report in 1822, the same body expressed, not only the hope, 
but the satisfaction, of seeing distinct evidences of the wil- 
lingness of slaveholders to liberate their slaves for the pur- 
pose of sending them to Africa. 6 The delight of those 
Managers was expressed in still stronger terms in 1823. 7 
Lafayette, for whom the leaders of the Society had great 
respect, and who was one of its vice-presidents, looked to 
the day when its influence in bringing about emancipation 
would be of great importance. 8 From the time of its or- 
ganization to about 1825, the leading motive of those who 
controlled the organization was the elevation of the Ameri- 
can free negro; but the most important secondary result 
that they hoped the Society might have was the widespread 
cultivation of a sentiment favorable to emancipation. After 
1825 the desire for the uplift of the free negro and the 
liberation of the slave came to be equally important, it 
seems, in the policy of the Society. And gradually, and for 
years thereafter, its efforts were directed more to securing 
the emancipation of slaves than to the elevation of the free 
negro. It has already been seen that Gerrit Smith, in leav- 
ing the Society, made this very criticism of it. 

Although at no time was the influence of the Coloniza- 
tionists exerted in opposition to emancipation, it is true that 
during its early years, the Society was careful to violate 
neither its own constitution nor local, municipal law on the 
subject of slavery. For instance, there were cases in which 
runaway slaves came to the Society's agents, requesting to 
be sent to Liberia. 9 Such requests were refused. Re- 

B Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Coloniza- 
tion Society, MS., vol. i, p. 107. 4 

6 Ibid., vol. i, p. 100. 

7 Ibid., vol. i, p. 209. 

8 African Repository, vol. i, p. 285. 

9 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., C. Wright to 
Gurley, Montpelier, December 29, 1826; Minutes of Board of Mana- 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION I 83 

quests were made to the Society to apply its funds directly 
to the purchase of slaves for transportation to the colony. 
These also were refused, though agents of the Society were 
willing and glad to furnish lists of slaves who might be pur- 
chased in order for transportation; and Gurley even went 
so far as to suggest that if funds were placed in the hands 
of the Colonization Society for the express purpose of being 
applied to the benefit of those who, if such funds were not 
available, would revert to slavery, the Society would gladly 
make use of such funds for the purpose designated. 10 And 
there is on record a case in which twelve or fifteen slaves 
in Virginia were held in slavery for want of funds to secure 
their being placed in the hands of the Society. Gerrit 
Smith, already turned Abolitionist, refused, it seems, to 
furnish the financial assistance, and John McDonogh, of 
New Orleans, a leader among Colonizationists, directed the 
treasurer of the Society to draw on him for the required 
amount. 11 When in 1843 McLain, Treasurer of the So- 
ciety, was working for the cause in Louisiana, he reported 
to the Washington office that he hesitated to appeal for 
funds because the Louisiana Society wished the first three 
hundred dollars raised to be applied to the purchase of " the 
learned Blacksmith of Alabama," a remarkable negro slave. 
This he felt to be a violation of the constitution of the 
Society. 12 

The tendency, however, never was to construe too strictly, 
but too liberally, the terms of the constitution in this re- 
spect. The inclination of Colonizationists was so favorable 
to emancipation that now and then resolutions were sub- 
mitted and adopted, whose object was to remind the Society 
that its purpose was, historically, to secure the elevation of 
the free negro rather than the liberation of the slave. Hon. 

gers of American Colonization Society, MS., Sept. 26, 1827; De- 
cember 12, 1827 ; May 19, 1828. 

10 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Rev. 
H. J. Ripley, December 9, 1842. 

11 Ibid., Gurley to Ripley, December 9, 1842, No. 499. 

12 Ibid., McLain to Gurley, New Orleans, May 6, 1843 ; Finley to 
Gurley, Natchez, May 4. 1843. 



1 84 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Robert M. McLane of Maryland secured in 1849 tne pas- 
sage of such resolutions, which set forth well the attitude 
the Society took : 

Resolved, That in all action affecting this institution [slavery] in 
its social or political aspect, the American citizen and statesman 
who reveres the Federal Union has imposed upon him the most 
solemn obligations to respect in spirit and letter the authority of 
local and municipal sovereignties, and to resist all aggressive influ- 
ences which tend to disturb the peace and tranquility of the States, 
that may have created or sanctioned this institution. 

Resolved, further, That the efforts of the American Colonization 
Society to facilitate the ultimate emancipation and restoration of 
the black race to social and national independence are highly hon- 
orable and judicious and consistent with a strict respect for the 
rights and privileges of the citizens of the several States wherein 
the institution of slavery is sanctioned by municipal law. 13 

Such reminders were needed especially for the auxiliary 
societies which, in many instances, were with the greatest 
difficulty prevented from going farther than was consistent 
with the constitution in the effort to liberate slaves. No- 
table among these was the Philadelphia Society. Elliot 
Cresson, for instance, wrote in 1830 that Philadelphians 
wished their funds used " for the special purpose of sending 
manumitted slaves," and suggested that free negroes be 
required to pay their own transportation expenses. 14 Thomas 
Buchanan, while agent for the New York and Philadelphia 
Societies, and a short while before his appointment as colo- 
nial governor of Liberia, secured not only the liberty of 
forty slaves but also a contribution of fifteen hundred dol- 
lars from their owner to be applied for their benefit. 15 In 
1843 Treasurer McLain, of the parent Society, was writing 
to Virginians inquiring for the names of slaves whose lib- 
eration could be secured on condition of their removal to 
Africa. He thought he could raise the money with which 
to secure the liberty of some of them, though here he was 
undoubtedly going beyond the constitution of the Society. 
He wrote : " We have many friends who are beginning to 

13 Minutes of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., January 16, 1849. 

14 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to 
Gurley, Philadelphia, September 23, 1830. 

15 African Repository, vol. xiv, p. 54. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION I 85 

feel a strong - desire to aid in sending slaves to Liberia who 
cannot be set at liberty unless they are sent and who cannot 
be sent unless somebody gives the means." 10 In 1843 tne 
Massachusetts Society was placing on certain of its dona- 
tions the proviso that they should be used in defraying the 
expenses of emancipated slaves. 17 In 1845 the Massachu- 
setts agent wrote : " I think we can get the money for those 
seven slaves ; and some of it will be money that we should 
not otherwise receive." 18 

A peculiarly interesting case is that of the Kentucky slave, 
Reuben. Rev. J. B. Pinney, agent for the Colonization So- 
ciety, had gone to Kentucky to collect a group of liberated 
slaves, twenty-one of them, and conduct them to the port 
of embarkation for Liberia. Among the number was a 
family of children whose father was still a slave. A meet- 
ing was held in the church, of which the prominent Colo- 
nizationist, Dr. Breckenridge, was pastor. Reuben was 
asked if he would like to accompany his children. He ex- 
pressed great desire to go. The audience was asked whether 
they desired at once to purchase Reuben and send him and 
his children. Hardly had the invitation to contribute been 
given when the President's table was surrounded by those 
who within a few minutes had contributed a fund sufficient 
to secure Reuben's release. 19 This is interesting not alone 
as an incident, but because it throws a light upon the atti- 
tude that a group of Colonizationists in a border slavehold- 
ing State took toward the emancipation of a slave for the 
purpose of transportation to the colony. Examples will 
hereafter be given to show that these efforts to secure the 
emancipation of slaves were not confined to the New Eng- 
land or the Middle States. Hundreds of slaves in Louis- 
iana, Mississippi and Tennessee, as well as in Kentucky and 

16 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., McLain to 
Tracy, March 7, 1843, No. 743; McLain to C. W. Andrews, March 
7, 1843, No. 744- 

17 Ibid., Gurley to Whittlesey, Boston, June 9, 1843. 

18 Ibid., Tracy to McLain, Boston, April 21, 1845. 

19 African Repository, vol. xxi, pp. 11-12. 



1 86 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

Virginia, were liberated because of the efforts of Colo- 
nizationists. 

Of the effect of Colonization upon the spirit of emanci- 
pation, considering the South in general, President Thomas 
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad wrote, in 1829: "... 
the exertions of the Society have already effected a moral 
influence which is obviously perceptible," although he real- 
ized that Colonization was only one of the various causes 
of >the change in sentiment. 20 In 1830 Key announced that 
there were at that time more than six hundred slaves willing 
to go to Liberia and offered by their owners to the Society, 
as soon as its means were sufficient to care for so many. 21 
Benjamin F. Butler, soon to be attorney-general in Andrew 
Jackson's cabinet, believed that the Colonization Society 
had already " done more to promote in the Southern States 
the Emancipation of slaves, than had been accomplished by 
all the efforts made with direct reference to such a result, 
since the revolution." He stated that the report of every 
auxiliary society in the South had testified to the willing- 
ness of many slaveholders to emancipate their negroes as 
soon as they could be transported and cared for by the So- 
ciety. 22 William Maxwell, a leading Colonizationist of 
Virginia, bore witness to its power as an encouragement to 
slaveholders to manumit their slaves. 23 Elijah Paine, of 
Vermont, expressed a similar view. 24 In the African Re- 
pository for 1842, there are notices of between five and six 
hundred slaves emancipated for the purpose of transporta- 
tion to Liberia, and it must not be forgotten that many 
slaveholders who were willing to send their negroes to the 
colony refused to allow their names to appear in the public 
press. 25 In 1845 tne official journal of the Society an- 
nounced : " Hundreds of slaves have already been set free 

20 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., P. E. Thomas 
to Gurley, Baltimore, September 30, 1829. 

21 African Repository, vol. vi, pp. 138-139. 

22 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 162. 

23 Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 55. 

24 Ibid., vol. xv, pp. 44-48. 

25 Ibid., vol. xviii, passim. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 1 87 

in order that they might be removed to Liberia. Hundreds 
more are now offered to the Society, if it will assume the 
expense of sending them out." 26 

Of the effect of the Society's influence in Kentucky, the 
general agent for the West reported 

a growing disposition for gratuitous manumission and ... an 
avowed determination on the part of some of our most influential 
men to press with all their might the subject of gradual abolition 
in case a convention shall be called to settle the disturbances of our 
State, a resolution for which has been already introduced in the 
House of Representatives. I mention this for your private satis- 
faction ; I mean to say its publication would be premature. Twenty- 
two slaves with the means of transportation were the other day 
willed to the Society by a gentleman in Bourbon County and eighty- 
odd have been very recently liberated by one man in Clarksville, 
Tennessee. I would mention several other cases of which I have 
been particularly informed. 27 

Again, in 1829, he wrote that many slaveholders were ready 
to liberate their slaves when they could be received by the 
Society. 28 A member of the Kentucky State Society called 
attention to the very widespread sentiment in favor of 
emancipation, and attributed it, in considerable measure, to 
the influence of the Colonizationists, though he admitted 
that an effort had been made to drag it into politics, the 
Jackson men saying " it is a party thing." 29 R. J. Breck- 
enridge, while yet a resident of Kentucky, declared in 1831 : 

It is now generally admitted, that a very large number of those 
owning slaves, perhaps as many as one-third of them, would decid- 
edly favor the gradual emancipation of the slaves of this State; 
provided the great accumulation of free negroes supposed to be con- 
sequent on such a step could be avoided. Among the non-slave- 
holders, I never saw a person of ordinary intelligence, who was not 
decidedly favorable to some efficient project of that sort. 

One of the secrets of the Society's influence throughout 
the upper South was that it proposed not only to emanci- 
pate, but also to remove; and it must never be forgotten 
that one of the most powerful objections to the abolition of 

26 Ibid., vol. xxi, pp. 145-149; vol. xix, p. 189; vol. xx, p. 229; 
Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Mary B. Blackford 
to Gurley, Fredericksburg, Va., January 28, 1843. 

27 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., B. O. Peers to 
Gurley, Maysville, Ky., December n, 1826. 

28 Ibid., Peers to Gurley, Feb. 7, 1829. 

29 Ibid., Gurley, Lexington, Ky., September 5, 1828. 



1 88 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

slavery, from the point of view of the South, was that the 
free negro would become a black peril to the South. 30 

Robert S. Finley, a son of the venerable Robert Finley, 
assured the parent Society that it could secure without diffi- 
culty all the emigrants it could accommodate. " I have 
heard," he wrote, " within the last ten days without making 
particular inquiries on the subject of hundreds of slaves 
who are only held in bondage until the Colonization Society 
will undertake to colonize them. And I have no hesitation 
in saying that there are thousands of slaves in this State 
who are merely held by their masters in trust for the same 
praiseworthy object." 31 In 1839, an assistant secretary of 
the Society wrote as hopefully as had Finley. 32 Elliot 
Cresson, traveling in the interest of the Society, wrote from 
Mississippi in 1840 that the whole South, and particularly 
Kentucky, seemed to be ready to cooperate in the coloniza- 
tion of its slaves. 33 

In Virginia there were not wanting signs of the Society's 
influence. The State Colonization Society and the Lynch- 
burg Society reported large numbers of slaves, as well as 
free negroes, desiring to go to the colony, many of the 
slaves being offered their liberty on condition of removal 
by the Society. 34 Monroe once told Elliot Cresson that if 
the Society could raise funds sufficient to care for the set- 
tlers, he could procure ten thousand slaves by emancipation 
in Virginia alone. 35 

In North Carolina as late as 1840, the Society's agent 
reported continued growth of sentiment favorable to eman- 
cipation if accompanied by removal. One slaveholder, the 

30 African Repository, vol. vii, pp. 48-49. 

31 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., R. S. Finley to 
Gurley, Lexington, Ky., April 12, 1831. 

32 Ibid., Knight to Wilkeson, Frankfort, Ky., November 30, 1839. 

33 Ibid., Cresson to Wilkeson, Natchez, Miss., April 13, 1840. 

34 African Repository, vol. iv, pp. 307-311; vol. v, p. 203; vol. vi, 
pp. 214-215 ; Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Atkin- 
son to Gurley, Petersburg, Va., December 17, 1831. 

35 African Repository, vol. xv, p. 84; Letters of American Coloni- 
zation Society, MS., Gurley to Rev. Stephen Taylor, July 13, 1842, 
No. 148. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 1 89 

owner of upwards of one thousand negroes, was reported 
as determined to emancipate them all if the colony con- 
tinued to improve and if the Society could make provision 
for them. 36 So efficient were the North Carolina Quakers 
in their cooperation with the Society, that they alone seemed 
able to supply all the emigrants that could be accommodated 
with the limited means of the Colonizationists. From 1825 
to 1830, slaveholders in that State placed in the hands of 
these Quakers hundreds of slaves, on condition of their re- 
moval to Liberia. 37 

It must not be supposed that there were no counter influ- 
ences. In comparing the Abolition and Colonization move- 
ments it has already been set forth that one of the strongest 
of these counter forces was the Abolitionists themselves. 
Whether by picturing in dark colors the motives of Coloni- 
zationists, or by assuring the negroes that emigration was 
not their privilege, but rather their banishment, or by pic- 
turing the terrors of the sea or the ferocity of the native 
Africans or the fatal consequences of the period of acclima- 
tion in the colony, or the fact that the negro had a right to 
enjoy the same privileges in America that his white brother 
had, or by speaking of slaveholders, and to slaveholders, in 
terms calculated to exasperate not only an enemy but a 
friend— in all these ways, and more, the Garrisonians were 
working up a sentiment which made it impossible for the 
Northern States and the Southern to meet on common 
ground in the solution of a great problem. 
' It is a fact, and a fact altogether neglected by proponents 
of Garrison, that no considerable section of American citi- 
zenship would have borne Garrisonian insult without uniting 
in opposition. His own New England would have risen in 
as radical opposition, as it did rise in radical support, if he 
had spoken of its citizenship in the same unmeasured terms 

36 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., W. McKenney 
to Wilkeson, Greensboro, N. C, Nov. 6 1840. 

37 Ibid J C. Ehringhaus to Gurley, Elizabeth City, N. C, Sep- 
tember 30, 1826; Cresson to Gurley, Aug. 23, 1828; African Reposi- 
tory, vol. v, p. 94. 



I9O THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

that he used in describing Southerners. This is true be- 
cause a man's a man, and not a superman. Too much has 
been made of the peculiarities of Southern temperament 
and not enough made of the peculiarities of Garrisonian 
abuse. Garrison thought of the South in terms of Ephraim 
and his Idol, and that was true in 183 1 of a part of the 
lower South. But a truer picture of the upper South in 
183 1 would have been that represented by Prometheus 
Bound. 

Garrison's abuse furnished the South with the best justi- 
fication it ever had for plunging into civil war. Ultra- 
Abolition made a patriot of many a man who could not have 
fought with great earnestness to preserve the institution of 
slavery. Garrisonian methods made patriots of Southern 
opponents of slavery, for they enabled the South to stand, 
not only as the defender of a bad thing but also as the de- 
fender of a good thing; not only as a defender of slavery, 
but also of the Constitution of the United States. Coloni- 
zationists took away the strongest ground the South had to 
stand on in her defense of slavery, for Colonizationists ad- 
mitted that the Constitution stood between them and the 
positively proslavery advocates. Garrisonians, by refusing 
fully to admit that, had a large part in the very making of 
their arch-enemy Calhoun. They gave him the opportunity 
of defending the South in the same breath with which he 
defended the Constitution. They assisted him powerfully 
in making his reputation as a great political theorist, as well 
as a great proslavery advocate. It may now appear that 
radical abolitionism was pregnant not only with influences 
opposed to Colonization, but also with influences opposed to 
emancipation. 

Other counter influences should be mentioned, such as the 
injudicious publication of articles advocating emancipation, 
the belief of some slaveholders that their "people" would 
not be safe in the colony from the dangers of hostile tribes 
and that proper provision was not made for receiving them, 
the fear that their slaves after being liberated might escape 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION I9I 

from the vessel before it left port, the unwillingness of many 
negroes to go to Liberia, the refusal of some slaveholders 
to encounter public criticism, the extreme sensitiveness of 
portions of the South, and particularly of Virginia, to any 
efforts made to secure aid from the Federal Government, 
and the widespread realization that already the Coloniza- 
tionists had more applicants than their funds would permit 
of sending to Africa. 38 

Indeed, there was probably not a time during the whole 
period herein considered when, notwithstanding the counter 
influences of which mention has just been made, the Society 
could not have enlarged greatly its operations and secured 
the liberation of a much larger number of slaves than were 
given over to it, if it had had funds sufficient to settle them. 
As early as 1827 the Managers were compelled to refuse 
passage to recently emancipated slaves in parts of Virginia, 
and of slaves who would be emancipated to go to the col- 
ony. 39 The public journal of the Society contains many 
evidences that Abolitionists could have secured at once the 
liberation of hundreds and thousands of slaves if they had 
been willing to contribute to the support of the Society 
which could get slaves for the asking when Garrison could 
not have bought them at any price. 

The panic of 1837 was very disastrous to the enlarging 
opportunities of the Society. John McDonogh of Louis- 
iana thought that in 1840 there were hardly fifty solvent 
men in New Orleans, 40 and that same year the treasurer of 
the Society was appealing to friends in the North to furnish 
the means without which the liberty of certain slaves could 

38 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Hunt to Gur- 
ley, Brunswick, Va., October 5, 1826; Brand to Gurley, Richmond, 
Va., August 20, 1827; Brand to Gurley, Richmond, Va., November 
3, 1827; M. B. Blackford to Gurley, Fredericksburg, Va., August 
18, 1845; McLain to Rev. N. S. Dodge, February 20, 1843, No. 677; 
W. M. Blackford to Gurley, Fredericksburg, Va., October 21, 1829; 
C. S. Carter to Gurley, Richmond, Va., December 22, 1831 ; African 
Repository, vol. xii, p. 89; vol. xiv, pp. 43-47- 

39 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., March 26, 1827. 

40 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Cresson to 
Wilkeson, New Orleans, April 2, 1840. 



I92 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

not be secured. " We are trying hard," wrote McLain, " to 
raise the means of sending to Liberia about 40 liberated 
slaves, who must be sold again into slavery if not sent soon. 
In these circumstances we should be unfaithful to the im- 
portant trusts committed to us, if we did not appeal to every 
friend of the colored man for help." 41 Letters were sent 
to leading Colonizationists throughout the United States for 
aid in securing the liberty and transportation of slaves 
offered for the Colony. 

In 1841 the general agent, Judge Wilkeson, thus instructed 
McLain who was working for the cause in the South: 
" Study economy and take the negro only who will go to 
slavery unless sent to Liberia, unless his expenses are 
paid." 42 Appeals were made during this year to save from 
slavery and the cupidity of heirs eleven slaves in Kentucky, 
and at another time, eighteen slaves from the same State. 48 
The appeal of the Colonizationists was : " We must save 
them"; "What shall we do? We have now no means of 
defraying their expenses. Let them be sold? We never 
could justify this to the American people." "More emi- 
grants offer than we can raise the means of sending." In 
1842 a slaveholder of Nashville, Tennessee, desired to place 
in the hands of the Society for emigration sixty slaves; a 
slaveholder living near New Orleans made an offer of 
eighty slaves ; a lady in Virginia desired to make the same 
disposition of some sixty of her "people," but the Society 
had not the funds to fit out an expedition. 44 

During that year the treasurer sent to a slaveholder the 
following refusal: "I wish it was in my power to inform 
you that the Soc. could pay the expenses of sending the 
family you wish to liberate. But the applications are so 
numerous and the Soc. so in debt, the Ex. Committee have 

41 Ibid., McLain to Hubbard, December 30, 1840, No. 487; Presi- 
dent Humphrey of Amherst, December 30, 1840, No. 490. 

42 Ibid., Wilkeson to McLain, April 6, 1841, No. 114. 

_ 43 Ibid., McLain to D. Baldwin, vol. iv, No. 1542; Theodore Fre- 
linghuysen, August 26, 1841, No. 70. 

44 Ibid., Gurley to Jacob Gibson, February 14, 1842, No. 629; Gur- 
ley to George Barker, February 17, 1842, No. 641. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION I 93 

been obliged to resolve that for the present they can send 
out none but such as can pay their own expenses." 45 And 
within about three months he was appealing for $7500.00 
with which to fit out an expedition, on which one hundred 
and sixty-seven slaves were to go to Liberia " if we can 
send them," otherwise a part of them were to revert to 
slavery. " Oh, that our Northern friends but understood 
the magnitude and importance of the great work in which 
we are engaged." 46 But appeals to New England failed of 
the desired results. Mr. Garrison had declared that it was 
the purpose of the Colonizationists to " rivet more firmly 
the fetters of the slave." 

To those who suppose that the only reason slaveholders 
could offer for continuing to hold their slaves was that they 
preferred to do so, it may be of value to point out some of 
the problems involved in the liberation by a master of his 
negroes; and to show that there were slaveowners in the 
South who despised the institution and who were glad of 
an opportunity to be rid of the responsibility and burden 
when they found an opportunity to do so with safety, as 
they thought, to their country. In 1827 a Mississippi slave- 
holder, preparing his twenty-three negroes for emigration 
to Liberia, wrote the Society, telling of the farming tools 
and carpenter's outfit he hoped to give them on their depar- 
ture, and thus expressed his gratification at finding a way 
out of the burden of slaveholding : 

I hope that it will be in the power of the Society to give them a 
passage early in June, that I may be enabled to wipe from my char- 
acter the foulest stain with which it was ever tarnished and pluck 
from my bleeding conscience the most pungent sting. I had fully 
determined several years past to emancipate them about this time 
but had been much perplexed in my mind in relation to their future 
place of residence, until I learned that Heaven had provided an 
asylum in the land of their ancestors, where I had long been of 
opinion it was right that they should be transported and with them 
the seeds of civilization and Christianity to make some amends . . . 
for the many wrongs and outrages committed ... by a people who 
styled themselves Christians for so many centuries. 47 

45 Ibid., McLain to Dr. W. S. Holcombe, August 17, 1842, No. 236. 

46 Ibid., McLain to G. W. Campbell, November 20, 1842, No. 445 ; 
Gurley to Dr. A. Proudfit, No. 448; Gurley, No. 336. 

47 Ibid., Silas Hamilton to Gurley, Adams County, Miss., Decem- 
ber 28, 1827. 

13 



194 



THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 



Sometimes the difficulty was in the expense involved in the 
preparation of the slaves for liberty, and one would be sur- 
prised to read the many evidences of real desire on the part 
of those masters who offered their slaves to the Society to 
send their negroes well prepared, well equipped, and well 
provisioned. 48 William Johnson, of Western Virginia, who 
was the owner of nine slaves, one of whom he had bought 
with the express purpose of freeing him with his sister, was 
an uneducated, poor, but sincere slaveholder for conscience 
sake. After making two attempts " to try to git money to 
send them to liberia," he appeals to the Society to relieve 
him of the burden. 49 

In many cases the difficulty was simply one of deciding what 
to do with the slaves if they were to be freed. It has been 
seen that in most of the Southern States the laws against 
emancipations within the State were made more stringent 
and were more strictly enforced after the Garrisonian onset 
and the development of the cotton industry. The result 
was that slaveholders, no matter what they thought of the 
evils of slavery, could not lawfully manumit, except by 
transporting the manumitted to some part of the Union, or 
to some other place where such prohibitory laws were not 
in operation. Sometimes, it seems, the very consideration 
of the advantages of the Colonization movement led directly 
and immediately to the determination to emancipate, on 
condition of removal. 50 Sometimes the difficulty arose 
from the unwillingness to divide families, separating hus- 
hand and wife, parents and children, one of the most repul- 
sive aspects of the whole repulsive system of slavery. 

It would not be practicable in a study of this nature to 
attempt a complete summary of even the most interesting 
instances of emancipation and transportation to the colony ; 
but it is important to mention a number of such cases. A 

48 Ibid., A. M. Marbury to Gurley, Alexandria, Va., May 26, 1835. 

49 Ibid., Wm. Johnson to Fendall, Tyler County, Va., November 
26, 1836. 

50 Ibid., McKenney, Norfolk, Va., December 27, 1832; C. W. An- 
drews to Gurley, Richmond, Va., February I, 1836; C. C. Harper, 
Baltimore, Md., April 24, 1828. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 1 95 

flood of light is thereby thrown upon the inquiries : "What 
portion of the South furnished the largest number of eman- 
cipations to the Society? What portion furnished the 
largest number of large single emancipations? What pro- 
visions were made for the emancipated slaves ? What con- 
ditions were attached to the acts of emancipation? Did 
those who sent portions of their slaves to the colony ex- 
press, after hearing from them, a willingness to send others? 
Were those emancipated chiefly the old and infirm, or were 
the emigrants able-bodied, valuable negroes? Up to and 
including 1832, among the emancipations with provision for 
emigration to Liberia, are the following : 

A lady from near Charles Town, Virginia, liberated ten 
slaves ; also two slaves whom she purchased because of their 
relation to her own. For these two she gave $800. They 
were manumitted for the purpose of emigration to Africa. 61 
William H. Fitzhugh, a Vice-President and active member 
of the Colonization Society, by will liberated all his slaves, 
numbering about three hundred. Their liberation was to 
date from 1850. Upon their consent to go to Liberia, and 
they were to have their freedom whether or not they agreed 
to go to the Colony, their passage was to be paid and they 
were to be given fifty dollars each. 52 

David Shriver, of Maryland, by will emancipated his 
thirty slaves ; Colonel Smith, of Sussex County, Virginia, 
by will emancipated seventy or eighty, leaving about $5000 
for their transportation and settlement. 53 Miss Patsy Morris, 
of Virginia, by will emancipated her sixteen slaves, leaving 
$500 for their passage to the colony. Sampson David, of 
Tennessee, emancipated, by will, his twenty-two slaves, and 
Herbert B. Elder, of Petersburg, Virginia, twenty. A 
Georgian liberated forty-nine, the greater part of his for- 
tune, on condition that they should go to the colony. In 

61 Carey, pp. 8-9. 

52 Minutes of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., January 18, 1849, p. 74. 

53 Carey, pp. 8-9; African Repository, vol. ii, pp. 29-30. 



I96 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

North Carolina alone there had been offered to the Society 
six hundred and fifty-two slaves. 54 

Mrs. Elizabeth Moore, of Kentucky, provided, by will, 
for the emancipation of all her slaves, about forty. Charles 
Henshaw, of Virginia, manumitted sixty to send them to 
Liberia. 55 A Mr. Funston, of Frederick County, Virginia, 
emancipated ten slaves, and by will provided $1000 to cover 
their transportation expenses. 56 Another Virginia slave- 
holder emancipated one hundred and ten slaves. Another, 
a Methodist minister of Suffolk, Virginia, emancipated up- 
wards of thirty, leaving several hundred dollars to be ap- 
plied to their transportation. 57 A Virginia lady emanci- 
pated twenty-five, and a slaveholder of Kentucky, sixty. 58 
David Bullock, of Virginia, emancipated twenty-three, the 
oldest not over forty years. This slaveholder inquires for 
the negroes as to "their expectations when they arrive, as 
to their immediate support, and their future chance for liv- 
ing, whether they will have land allotted to them, etc." 59 
Among those emancipated after 1832, are the following: 

The New Orleans Picayune contains this announcement: 
"We understand that six hundred negroes, belonging to a 
gentleman of this city, lately deceased, are to be liberated 
according to his will, provided they are willing to go to 
Africa, in which case ample provision is to be made for 
their transportation." 60 Another slaveholder was willing 
to emancipate sixty, if funds could be secured with which 
to transport them to the colony. 61 John McDonogh, of 
New Orleans, was ready in 1842 to send eighty or eighty- 
five slaves, valued at $150,000.00, well trained and an un- 
usual acquisition. Of McDonogh's negroes, about fifty-five 

54 Carey, pp. 8-9 ; African Repository, vol. ii, p. 163 ; vol. iv, p. 185. 

55 African Repository, vol. i, pp. 191-192. 

56 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 352-353- 

57 Ibid., vol. iii, p. 27. 

58 African Repository, vol. iv, p. 251. 

59 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., D. Bullock to 
Gurley, Louisa, Va., September 13, 1827. 

60 African Repository, vol. xiv, p. 63, copied from New Orleans 
Picayune, February 13, 1838. 

61 African Repository, vol. xviii, p. 80. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 1 97 

were adult and the rest children from six to twelve years 
of age. So far was the colonization mode of securing the 
emancipation of slaves favorably looked upon, even in 
Louisiana, that a New Orleans paper commented in the 
most favorable terms upon both the Society, Mr. Mc- 
Donogh, and his philanthropic scheme of emancipating all 
his negroes, and upon the condition of the colony as re- 
vealed in the letters sent back to persons in the State from 
the negroes he had sent out. These letters abounded in 
expressions of thankfulness and gratitude to their former 
master for his generosity and liberal treatment of them. 

McDonogh had worked out a plan by which the negroes 
were allowed to earn their own freedom, by using advan- 
tageously certain hours and days given them for that pur- 
pose by their master. It was one of the most interesting 
plans ever proposed for the liberation of slaves without 
actual expense to the owner. McDonogh found that, if the 
slave used well the time given to him, he could secure his 
own freedom within fifteen or seventeen years. This free- 
dom he gave to those who were his own property. And 
although The Liberator and other Abolitionist papers se- 
verely criticised the plan, McDonogh was trying to recom- 
mend to the southern slaveholder a plan by which he could 
rid his country of slavery and at the same time do so with- 
out great loss to himself. 62 

In 1832 Major Bibb, of Kentucky, sent thirty-two of his 
slaves to the colony, and the following year he tendered 
freedom to the remaining forty, on condition that they 
would emigrate. 63 This year also, Dr. James Bradley, of 
Georgia, manumitted about sixty negroes, who emigrated to 
the Colony. 64 The following year Dr. T. M. Ambler, of 
Virginia, emancipated about thirty, who went to the Col- 

62 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., McLain, New 
Orleans, La., July 2, 1844; Gurley to Proudfit, March 7, 1842, No. 
677; African Repository, vol. xix, p. 48 ff. ; pp. 141-142. 

63 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., G. C. Light to 
Gurley, Cynthiana, Ky., June 6, 1833. 

64 Lugenbeel. 



I98 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

ony. 65 In 1834 Dr. John Ker, one of the most prominent 
Colonizationists in the Southwest, wrote asking that sixteen 
of a considerable number of slaves left free, on condition 
of their emigration, by James Green of Mississippi, be al- 
lowed passage : 

I am authorized to say that they [the executors] will pay the whole 
expense of their emigration, and, agreeably to the will of the Testa- 
tor, will furnish them with a very handsome outfit, amounting, for 
those over twelve years old, to from three to five hundred dollars, 
and somewhat less for the younger ones. . . . You will allow me to 
bespeak for them ... all the attention and favor which may be 
necessary to their comfortable and eligible establishment in the 
Colony. 66 

In 1836 Gurley visited Mississippi in the interest of the 
Society, and his report to the Managers throws an interest- 
ing light upon the attitude of that State toward emancipa- 
tion, and also upon the estate of the deceased James Green, 
and the purpose of the principal executor in relation to the 
remaining slaves. Gurley was forcibly impressed with the 
liberality and cordiality of the Colonizationists of that State. 
They had contributed two thousand dollars "without my 
personal application to a single individual, and with my 
detention hardly for a day." 

On Monday, I visited James Railey, Esq. (principal executor of 
the estate of the late James Green) at his beautiful country seat. 
... Its generous proprietor opened to me fully his mind in regard 
to the estate . . . with written and verbal requests that it should be 
applied to the emancipation and colonisation of slaves from Missis- 
sippi in Liberia. It will be recollected, that certain slaves emanci- 
pated by Mr. Green have been sent to the colony, and Mr. Railey 
informs me, that their outfit and supplies and passage cost about 
$7000. The trust might, in the opinion of some, be fulfilled, were 
$20000 in addition, applied to the benevolent purposes of the testa- 
tor, but Mr. Railey states that it has been determined to devote 
$25000 more to the objects of testator's charitable desires. 67 

Alexander Donelson of Tennessee died in 1834, emanci- 
pating his slaves by will. By the laws of the State, negroes 
freed within its bounds were compelled to leave or revert 
to slavery, unless they were by the county court permitted 

« Ibid. 

86 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Ker to Gurley, 
Natchez, Miss., January 10, 1834. 
67 Ibid., Gurley to Fendall, June 30, 1836. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 1 99 

to remain. By decree of that court, Donelson's slaves were 
allowed to remain in the State until the time of embarka- 
tion, if they agreed to start for Liberia by January 20, 1836. 
The slaves were twenty in number. All were grown, and 
none over forty years of age. Donelson had left them all 
his personal property, amounting to a considerable sum. 
They had ample means to provide themselves with clothes, 
tools, and provisions. They could pay their own passage 
and still have money left after arriving in the colony. The 
son of the deceased had, by careful management, increased 
considerably the fund left by Donelson. He had left them 
together on the farm, had allowed them to continue their 
work, and had given them the proceeds of the crop. 68 In 
1834 one hundred and nine slaves owned by Dr. Hawes, of 
Virginia, were liberated and transported to the Colony. 69 

A Colonizationist from Hanover County, Virginia, wrote 
the Society in 1836 that a family of thirty slaves had been 
liberated in that county, on condition of their emigrating 
to the colony. Their passage was to be paid, and a sum 
sufficient for their comfortable settlement was to be given 
them. Another family, twenty-seven in number, had been 
liberated in the adjoining county. To each of the twenty- 
seven a legacy of one hundred and fifty dollars was left for 
the purpose of enabling them to settle either in some free 
State or in some country where they might enjoy their lib- 
erty. They had apparently decided to go to Liberia. 70 
During this year also, forty-two slaves, liberated by Wil- 
liam Foster, of Mississippi, arrived in the colony. 71 In 
1837 Thomas Potts, of Virginia, emancipated and sent to 
the colony fifty-nine negroes, paying the expense of their 
passage, amounting to four thousand and fifty dollars. 72 

68 Ibid., T. H. Fletcher to Gurley, Nashville, Term., August 12, 

1835. 

69 Lugenbeel. 

70 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., N. C. Cren- 
shaw to Fendall, Hanover County, Va., July 15, 1836. 

71 Sketch of the History of Liberia, MS. 

72 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Potts to Fen- 
dall, Sussex Court House, Va., October 13, 1837; November 18, 
1837. 



200 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

In 1840 an agent of the Society for Kentucky wrote : " A 
gentleman in this vicinity tendered me twenty slaves lately 
for emigration, upon condition that they were willing to go, 
and we would provide them means." 73 The year preceding 
this, John Rix, of North Carolina, sent twenty slaves lib- 
erated by him to Liberia. John McPhail, whose efforts for 
the Society in preparing for the sailing from Norfolk of a 
number of expeditions were of the greatest value, reported 
in 1839 that : 

I expect a family of fifteen probably the forerunner of a large 
number belonging to [a certain gentleman], if he should agree to the 
terms you may propose to take them out and provide for them six 
months after their arrival in Africa. . . . This is an affair I believe 
of much importance to the interest of the Society. I do not exactly 
know how many the gentleman owns but I am certain they amount 
to some hundreds; if he makes his mind up upon the subject he will 
send by every expedition some families. He writes to me in perfect 
confidence and says, " I wish nothing said of it either privately or 
publicly and no notice of it in the newspapers. . . ," 74 

In 1842 Wm. B. Lynch, of Virginia, emancipated nine- 
teen slaves on condition of their willingness to go to Africa. 
For their passage he appropriated five hundred dollars. 75 

In 1844 Lieut. C. W. Tomkins offered for his sister to 
liberate about forty slaves if they would go to Liberia. The 
same year Mrs. Jane Meaux, of Kentucky, left, by will, 
liberty to fourteen slaves on condition that they would go 
to the colony. Each was to be given one hundred dollars 
upon agreement to go, besides being furnished with house- 
hold and kitchen furniture. Of these slaves, the oldest 
was about thirty-five. 76 

Colonel Montgomery Bell of Tennessee sent companies 
of manumitted slaves to the colony at various times. By 
1854, he had already sent eighty-eight, and it was his pur- 
pose to continue until the whole number, some two hundred 

TS Ibid., Henkle to Wilkeson, Louisville, Ky., May 5, 1840. 

74 Ibid., volume of omitted letters, 1839-1842, John McPhail to 
Wilkeson, Norfolk, Va., November 16, 1839. 

75 Ibid., W. B. Lynch to McLain, Lynchburg, Va., November 7, 
1842. 

76 Ibid., Tomkins to McLain, Beaufort, N. C, September I, 1844; 
T. E. West to McLain, Nicholasville, Ky., December 7, 1844. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 201 

and fifty had been transported." Colonel Bell's slaves were 
very valuable. For a single one of them he had refused 
five thousand dollars, which was offered a short while be- 
fore the negro embarked for the colony. Bell was merely 
waiting until the funds of the Society were sufficient to 
send the rest of the people. 78 

It will already have been observed that many acts of 
emancipation were incorporated in the wills of slavehold- 
ers. This was a favorite method of offering liberty to the 
slaves. The act of emancipation, no matter when effected, 
involved a radical readjustment of the affairs of an estate, 
and must have had much to do with the choice of this 
method. It may be well to consider some notable cases of 
slaves left free by will, in addition to those already noted. 
It will here appear that on a number of occasions the So- 
ciety sued for the liberty of slaves. In many cases where 
suits were not instituted the liberty of the slaves was se- 
cured, or the possibility of their being set free investigated, 
by agents of the Society. 79 Sometimes they forestalled 
threatened or actual attempts to violate the provisions of 
emancipations contained in wills. 80 

By the will of Dr. Bradley of Virginia in 1831, all his 
negroes, numbering about fifty, were to be allowed to emi- 
grate to the colony. Their expenses were to be paid out of 
the proceeds of the estate. Those who were unwilling to 
go were to revert to slavery. 81 They were of all ages, from 
infants to sixty years. In 1835 application was made for 
passage to Liberia for forty-four slaves left free by the will 
of Thomas Hickenbotham, of Virginia. Most of them 
were in the prime of life. 82 The same year, General Black- 

77 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., June 23, 1854. 

78 Ibid., January 16, 1854; December 30, 1854. 

79 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., August 30, 1825 ; April 24, 1826. 

80 Ibid., October 22, 1827. 

81 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., R. Jordan to 
Gurley, Monticello, Va., February 26, 1831. 

82 Ibid., C. H. Page to Gurley, New Glasgow, Va., June 4, 1835. 






202 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

burn, also of Virginia, emancipated by will his forty-six 
slaves on condition of their willingness to go to the colony ; 
the expense of their transportation to be paid out of the 
proceeds of the estate. 83 

One of the most interesting bequests of slaves to the So- 
ciety was that of Captain Ross, of Mississippi. In 1834, 
Ross made a will bequeathing to his granddaughter a woman 
servant, Grace, with all her children, unless Grace should 
elect to go to Liberia, in which case she and her children 
were to be conveyed thither. The granddaughter was de- 
sired to maintain comfortably the testator's man servant, 
Hannibal and his sisters, Daphne, Dinah, and Rebecca. 
Hannibal was to receive an annuity of one hundred dollars, 
and each of his sisters an annuity of fifty dollars. In case 
they should elect to go to Liberia, there was to be given, in 
place of the annuities, to Hannibal five hundred dollars. 
Enoch, his wife Merilla, and their children were to be sent 
to some free State where they could be legally manumitted. 
To Enoch was to be given also five hundred dollars, unless 
he and his family should elect to go to Africa, in which case 
they should be conveyed thither, five hundred dollars being 
paid him upon his departure. 

The rest of his slaves and property were to be left to 
Ross' daughter, Mrs. Margaret Reed, for the rest of her 
natural life, or until she was disposed to carry out the re- 
maining provisions of his will, in relation to slaves and 
property. Upon Mrs. Reed's death, or her decision to carry 
out her father's design, all of the slaves of the age of 
twenty-one years and upwards, save those above referred 
to, and five others whose names were given, were to be 
assembled by the executors, who were to explain to them 
the provisions of the will and invite them to determine 
whether or not they desired to go to Liberia. Those who 
desired to go were to be conveyed thither, and those refus- 
ing to go were to be sold at auction, with the restriction that 
families were not to be separated. The proceeds from the 

83 Ibid., J. H. Peyton to Laurie, Staunton, Va., August 8, 1835. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 203 

sale and any other funds belonging to the testator's estate 
were, after the payment of expenses, to be paid into the 
treasury of the Colonization Society, to be applied to the 
transportation and maintenance of the slaves who elected 
to go. The total number of the slaves, when the will was 
made, was about one hundred and seventy. 

Ross was a planter of excellent judgment. The returns 
from the estate were large. But the Captain, it seems, 
applied its great revenues to the comfort of his "people." 
It was estimated that the estate brought in a revenue of 
some $20,000 a year. Of the slaves, Gurley wrote: "His 
slaves were kept disconnected from those on other planta- 
tions, and therefore constituted one great family of one 
hundred and seventy in number, who have been treated 
more like children than slaves. For industry, intelligence, 
and good order, none are their superiors. To render them 
happy appears to have been the great object of their mas- 
ter." Dr. John Ker, whose name appears so often in any 
study of the Colonization movement in Mississippi, said of 
Ross : " His slaves . . . felt, in a high degree, the mutual 
attachment which is not uncommon in the South between 
master and slave, and which ought to put to shame the slan- 
ders of ignorant or wicked Northern fanatics. He ardently 
desired to provide for their welfare and happiness after his 
death." 

Ross died in 1836, and his daughter made a will which 
was intended to carry out exactly the wishes of her deceased 
father. By 1840, however, the provisions of the will were 
being earnestly contested by certain of the heirs. The latter 
were able to arouse sentiment in their favor throughout the 
State, and the fight was carried into the State Legislature 
in 1 84 1 or 1842, where the result was the passage of a bill 
in the lower house, by which it would have been made un- 
lawful for the slaves to be emancipated even on condition 
of their removal to the colony. The High Court of Errors 
and Appeals had already decided favorably to the validity of 
the will, and the attempt of the legislature was in reality an 



204 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

attempt to annul an already announced decision of that court. 

Dr. Ker just at this time rendered the Colonization So- 
ciety the valuable service of opposing with great energy the 
passage of the bill when it came up for consideration in the 
Senate, of which he was a member. By a campaign of pub- 
licity and by great exertion he blocked this move to hold the 
slaves in slavery. The value of the estate in 1840, was 
estimated to be about $200,000, and it was to be used for 
provisioning the Ross and Reed slaves in Liberia and in 
providing educational institutions in the colony. In 1842 
the total number of slaves who were intended to be benefited 
by the will was upwards of three hundred. It appears that, 
after years of effort and vigilance, the Society won its point 
and secured the liberty of the slaves. Let those who doubt 
the sincerity of Gurley, John Ker, Captain Ross, or Rev. 
Zebulun Butler, during the days when the Colonization 
scheme was assailed by Garrisonians as a hypocritical collu- 
sion with the friends of perpetual slavery, consule refer- 
ences here given bearing upon the efforts both in and out of 
the courts to establish the Ross and Reed wills. 84 

Another interesting example is that of Richard Tubman 
of Georgia. The law of Georgia did not permit the eman- 
cipation of slaves within the State; but Tubman tried to 
secure a special act of permission by making provision 
for a liberal legacy to several of the literary institutions of 
the State, if the permission to emancipate were granted. 
The legislature refused the request. Application was made 
to the Society to transport the slaves, except four old men 
whose mistress had consented at their request to keep them. 
Of the remaining forty-four none was over forty years of 
age. The widow of the deceased paid the negroes, the year 
after her husband's death, $1000 for the crop they had 

84 African Repository, vol xii, pp. 233-235; vol. xv, pp. 3-4; vol. 
xvi, p. 50; vol. xviii, p. 99 ff. Letters of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., Gurley to Fendall, Rodney, Miss., July 22, 1836; Z. But- 
ler to McLain, Port Gibson, January 10, 1844; Gurley to McLain, 
New York, July 22, 1845; Gurley to Butler, September 29, 1843, 
No. 228. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 205 

raised. The value of the slaves was estimated at not less 
than $40,ooo. 85 

In 1837 application was made for the transportation of 
thirty-five slaves belonging to William Hunton who, by will, 
had offered them their freedom on condition that they would 
go to the colony. Otherwise they were to revent to slav- 
ery. 86 In 1840 William Smart, of Virginia, left, by will, 
between twenty and thirty, all of his negroes, on condition 
that they should go to the colony. 87 During this same year, 
there were two other cases of emancipations in Virginia 
that should here be noted : James Fox liberated about fifty 
negroes on condition that they should go to Liberia, other- 
wise they were to revert to slavery ; 88 and Mrs. Carter 
offered freedom to twenty-six on condition that they should 
go to the colony. 89 In Kentucky John Graham by will pro- 
vided that after 1850 his slaves, fifteen in number, were to 
have their liberty on condition of their willingness to emi- 
grate to the colony. 90 In 1842 Thomas Wallace, deceased, 
left by will fourteen slaves free on the condition of their 
going to the colony. 91 

Secretary McLain of the Society wrote to one of the 
Colonization agents in December, 1842 : " Keep in mind the 
old gentleman near Nashville, Tennessee, who wants to lib- 
erate his 68 slaves before he dies to keep them out of the 
hands of his only heir who is opposed to their liberation. 
The Old man is in feeble health — he is poor and cannot de- 
fray their expenses. About $3000 will carry them to the 
colony and support them six months." 92 In 1843 Thomas 
Lindsay, of Missouri, emancipated by will twenty-one slaves 

85 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Wm. Y. Allen 
to Gurley, Augusta, Ga., December 29, 1836. 

86 Ibid., John Marr to Mercer, Warrenton, Va., October 23, 1837. 

88 Ibid., Brand to Wilkeson, Richmond, Va., August 18, 1840. 

89 Ibid., M. B. Blackford to Wilkeson, Fredericksburg, Va., Sep- 
tember 16, 1840. 

90 Ibid., F. M. Bristow to Wilkeson, Elkton, Ky., November 24, 
1840. 

91 Ibid., L. W. Andey, Flemingsburg, Ky., September, 1842. 

92 Ibid., McLain to Dodge, December 27, 1842, No. 516; McLain 
to Dodge, October 27, 1842, No. 342. 



206 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOGIETY 

on condition of their emigration to Liberia ; and in Virginia, 
Hardenia M. Burnley emancipated by will the same num- 
ber, their transportation, outfit, clothing and maintenance 
in the colony for six months being provided for out of the 
estate. 93 

One of the most interesting cases of emancipation by will 
was that of Mr. Hooe of Virginia in 1845. Hooe provided 
for the emancipation of his two hundred slaves in Virginia 
and one hundred and fifty-eight in Mississippi and Alabama. 
Property sufficient to provide for their transportation was 
left to the Society, and the supervision of the execution of 
the will was placed directly in Gurley's hands as an execu- 
tor. Gurley's comment was : "... so much depends on 
examples like that of Mr. Hooe as to the prospect of future 
emancipations, that special efforts should be made that the 
humane purpose contemplated may be fully realized." 
There was considerable probability that that portion of the 
will directing the emancipation of those slaves who were in 
Mississippi and Alabama would be contested. Gurley ad- 
vised as to these, " to ascertain, as fully as possible, whether 
it is possible to institute any process, by which their case 
can be brought before the courts of the United States. . . . 
The executors are solemnly bound to neglect no possible 
legal means of securing the freedom of those slaves, and for 
one, I wish any measure, even if unpromising, adopted." 94 

By will of Stephen Henderson of Louisiana, his slaves, 
five or six hundred in number, were to be emancipated for 
the purpose of emigration to the colony. The first ten, 
chosen by lot, were to go within five years after Hender- 
son's death ; after ten years, twenty more were to go ; and 
after twenty-five years the remainder. The will was con- 
tested but was upheld by the Supreme Court of Louisiana. 95 

93 Ibid., G. C. Sibley to Gurley, Linden-Wood, Missouri, July 15, 
1843; J. O. St'eger to McLain, Richmond, Va., December 11, 1843. 

94 Ibid., Wm. Coppinger to McLain, Philadelphia, Pa., July 22, 
1845; Gurley to McLain, New York, August 12, 1845, October 28, 

184S. 

95 New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, August 15, 1845. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 20"J 

Besides these acts of emancipation of slaves for the 
colony and these bequests of money and of slaves, the rec- 
ords of the Society contain many interesting letters of in- 
quiry. Many slaveholders offered the Society their slaves 
when it would be ready to take them. Many others wrote 
for advice as to the disposition of the slaves, advice which 
Garrisonians were denied the privilege of giving. The real 
sacrifice some slaveholders were willing to make for the 
sake of emancipating their slaves it set forth in these letters. 
The care with which they prepare the slave for the time 
when he must depend upon his own efforts is also evident. 
In short, the Society was a sort of clearing house where the 
views of moderate Southerners and moderate Northerners 
were exchanged, and where the spirit of emancipation 
worked silently but mightily. Several examples of letters 
of this character will suffice. 

Rev. Thomas P. Hunt of Richmond, Virginia, desired to 
emancipate his twenty slaves, but was unable to provide 
funds sufficient for their transportation. He proposed that 
he be accredited as an agent in order to secure the funds 
necessary for their transportation to the colony. 96 Mrs. 
Barbie of Kentucky was perplexed as to the disposition of 
five or six slaves which she had not yet inherited, but which 
were to fall to her. She hoped they might be transported 
to the colony as soon after they came into her possession as 
possible. 97 A South Carolinian wrote for advice as to the 
disposition of his negroes, twenty-five in number. The act 
of emancipation would leave him a bare competency the 
rest of his life and he was consequently unable to bear the 
expense of transportation. 98 

A typical inquiry was that sent from Fincastle, Virginia, 
in 1832 : " I have from fifteen to twenty negroes I wish to 
emancipate. Will your Society receive and transport them 

96 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., August 14, 1826. . . 

97 Letters of American Colonization Society, Mb., J. (_. Lrane to 
Gurley, Richmond, Va., October 26, 1826. 

98 Ibid , W. H. Robbins, Cheraw, S. C, October 12, 1827. 



2o8 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

to Liberia?" or: "I have for a considerable time past de- 
termined to emancipate my slaves if such facilities would 
be afforded them (by the Society of which you are Agent) 
in getting off to the colony of Liberia, as are necessary and 
proper for their accommodation." 99 The slaves are valued 
at $3500.00. A Colonizationist from Lynchburg, Virginia, 
reported four groups of slaves held ready for manumission 
whenever the first opportunity offered to send them to 
Liberia. 100 

A citizen of Missouri desired to emancipate four slaves, 
three of whom he bought for the express purpose of eman- 
cipating them as soon as they had refunded to him, in labor, 
the amount expended in their purchase. Already he had 
executed to them deeds of emancipation on condition of 
their willingness to go to the colony. 101 A South Caro- 
linian offered his thirteen negroes to the Society to be taken 
to Liberia. " He has long had it in his heart to do this ; but 
he has not known in what way to effect it, and has requested 
me to open a correspondence with the Society. . . . Neither 
the old man nor his wife can die in peace without doing all 
they can to place their servants in a condition where they 
may enjoy liberty." The Society was to be given three 
hundred dollars toward the cost of transportation, and each 
negro man was to have one hundred dollars and each 
woman fifty dollars. 102 

In 1843 William B. Lynch, of Virginia, sent off his eighteen 
slaves for Liberia. Lynch had proposed to take them to 
the Northwestern States to enjoy their liberty; but after a 
visit of inquiry, he concluded that to enjoy an equal oppor- 
tunity and real freedom, they must be removed to the col- 
ony. Upon their leaving for Liberia he paid five hundred 

99 Ibid., G. Terrill to Gurley, Fincastle, Va., September 10, 1832; 
T. L. Leftwich, Liberty, Va., Sept. 14, 1832. 

100 Ibid., W. M. Rives, Lynchburg Va., October 16, 1832. 

101 Ibid., John Conway to Gurley, Bonhomme, Mo., November 25, 
1837. 

102 Ibid., B. Gildersleeve to Gurley, Charleston, S. C, April 7, 
1 841 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 209 

dollars towards the cost of transportation. 103 One of those 
choice Colonization spirits among the women of Virginia 
was Mrs. Mary B. Blackford. She had prepared Abram 
to be sent to the colony, and her care for him is of interest : 

Giving him his freedom and outfit is as much as I can do being 
limited in my funds. My brother writes me he is very apt in learn- 
ing any trade he is put to and suggests his being put to learn the 
carpenter's trade before he goes, but, I fear if I kept him here for 
the purpose, something would occur to prevent his having his free- 
dom. ... my heart is greatly set on this plan. . . . Pray ask that 
he may be cared for during the fever; if he were to die I should 
feel a heavy responsibility on me. 104 

Joseph H. Wilson of Kentucky was anxious that his 
twenty-seven slaves should have a passage to Liberia. They 
were valued at $12,000; and besides emancipating them, he 
proposed to give them $1000 or $1200. The Society's agent 
thus commented upon Wilson's treatment of his negroes: 
" He has no children and makes his slaves the object of his 
kindness. . . . the only evil I can see is that when they 
set up for themselves, as free people, . . . they will feel 
the loss of the care of their present owners," for he here 
referred also to two other families of slaves whose masters 
desired to emancipate them. 105 Mrs. Mary B. Blackford, 
writing in behalf of a friend who desired to emancipate and 
send to the colony her six slaves, commented on the particu- 
lar case : 

She will do her utmost in sending these people away, or rather in 
giving them their freedom, and I know it is entirely out of her 
power to furnish them with necessary funds. If some who judge 
slaveholders so hardly, knew all that I do of the conscientiousness, 
generous self-denial, insurmountable obstacles, which they would so 
gladly do away with, how differently they would regard them. In 
Virginia the owner is almost as much to be pitied as the slave. 106 

103 African Repository, vol. xix, p. 201. 

104 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., M. B. Black- 
ford to Gurley, Fredericksburg, Va., September 2, 1843. 

105 Ibid., Pinney to McLain, Bardsville, June 10, 1844. 

106 Ibid., M. B. Blackford to McLain, Mt. Airy, Va., February 2, 
1845; J. W. Norwood to Gurley, Hillsborough, N. C, 1826; Miss 
Judith Blackburn to Gurley, Mount- Vernon, March 29, 1831 ; J. L. 
Crawford to Gurley, Danville, Ky., February 27, 1842; G. W. Mc- 
Phail to McLain, Fredericksburg, Va., November II, 1845; African 
Repository, vol. vii, pp. 271-272. 

14 



210 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

It will be noted that no references have been made to 
slaves offered from Maryland, although that State was one 
of the first in the number offered for settlement in Africa. 
It will be remembered that very early in the thirties the 
Maryland Society assumed an independent attitude toward 
the parent Society. Thereafter the slaves offered were 
offered directly to the State organization, and no record 
therefore appears on the official documents of the Society. 107 

When an expedition was preparing to leave New Orleans 
the latter part of the year 1848, there were four hundred 
and seventy-nine negroes who had applied for passage to 
the colony. Of these, two hundred were those from the 
Ross estate, to revert to slavery if they were not removed 
by the end of January. 108 

The problem was not the difficulty in securing the eman- 
cipation of slaves or the want of inclination to encourage 
emancipation, but the want of funds to carry out their 
benevolent designs. If the Society had had the means it 
could have secured thousands more of the slaves of the 
South and could have made them freemen ; and those who 
measure the work and influence of that organization by the 
actual number of slaves transported have gotten a very in- 
adequate conception of its influence or its usefulness. The 
need of funds in the sending out of the expedition just 
spoken of is but one of many examples that might be pre- 
sented to show the inability, for want of funds, to meet its 
opportunities. If the States north of Mason and Dixon's 
line had offered as much money in cash as the States south 
of that line offered in slaves, leaving out of account the 
many thousands of dollars contributed in cash to the treas- 
ury of the Society from the slaveholding States themselves, 

107 For reports of expeditions sent out to the colony, see Minutes 
of Board of Managers of American Colonization Society, MS., Feb- 
ruary 9, 1829; Journal of Executive Committee of American Coloni- 
zation Society, MS., November 28, 1848; March 15, 1851 ; April 19, 
1851 ; November 7, 1851 ; December 16, 1852; November 18, 1853; 
January 16, 1854; December 20, 1854; etc. 

108 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization 
Society, MS., November 28, 1848. 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 211 

the statistics of emancipations would be written in quite dif- 
ferent figures. Or if the influence of the Society were even 
measured by the number of slaves offered to it, rather than 
by the limited number it was able to transport, those figures 
would still require a radical revision. 

But taking the figures as they are : by 1830 over two hun- 
dred of the slaves freed and sent out to Liberia had been 
emancipated by their masters for the express purpose of 
emigration to the colony. 109 In 1841 Gurley wrote that the 
Society "has secured the voluntary manumission of slaves, 
(about 2000) in value (viewed as property) nearly, if not 
quite, equal to the whole amount of funds given for the 
establishment of Liberia ; while its influence to prepare for 
future emancipations it were difficult to estimate." 110 Judge 
Wilkeson estimated the proportion of emancipated slaves to 
free negroes taken to the colony as more than one for one. 111 
By the beginning of 1855, about 3600 slaves had been actu- 
ally emancipated with a view to their settlement in Li- 
beria. 112 By the time the Society was fifty years old (1867) 
the number of slaves actually emancipated and sent to the 
colony was about 6000. 113 

109 A Few Fact's, published by American Colonization Society, 
MS., 1830. 

110 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. No. 283, p. 1023. 

111 Minutes of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., July 20, 1841. 

112 Ibid., January 16, 1855. 

113 Half-Century Memorial, American Colonization Society, 1867. 



212 



THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 



A List of Slaves Emancipated or Offered for Emancipation for 
Emigration to Liberian Colony, 1825-1835, Inclusive. 

The list given below must not be taken as official. It is a compi- 
lation collected from various sources. Doubtless it is very incom- 
plete. It will be of value, however, as showing the distribution of 
offered emancipations and the number of slaves offered by indi- 
vidual slaveholders. 



Year. 1 


State. 


Slaves Offered by 


Number Offered. 


1825 


Va. 


Name not given 


100 




** 


David Minge 


80 (approximately) 


" 


" 


Charles Henshaw 


60 


41 


" 


N. C. Crenshaw 


65 


" 


" 


Rev. Cave Jones 


2 


" 


" 


Rev. John Paxton 


11 


•' 


Ky. 


Miss Elizabeth Moore 


40 (approximately) 


" 


N. C. 


David Patterson 


11 


" 


Md. 


Dickinson 


1 


" 


" 


Name not given 


20 


" 


? 


Rev. Fletcher Andrew 


30 


1826 


Va. 


Colonel Smith 


70 or 80 


•* 


" 


H. B. Elder 


20 


" 


" 


Henry Robertson 


7 


*• 


•• 


Miss Patsy Morris 


16 


«• 


•• 


A clergyman 


30 (approximately) 


" 


•• 


A lady 


12 (approximately) 


" 


Md. 


David Shriver 


30 


** 


Tenn. 


Sampson David 


23 


** 


O. 


Rev. S. D. Hoge 


1 


I827 


Va. 


Funston 


10 


" 


•« 


Ward 


no 


«• 


" 


Rev. Robert Cox 


30 (approximately) 


" 


•* 


Col. David Bullock 


23 


" 


Md. 


Daniel Murray 


1 


«• 


" 


J. J. Merrick 


3 


" 


" 


Name not given 


2 


" 


N. C. 


William Fletcher 


12 


" 


S. C. 


M'Dearmid 


26 


4* 


? 


Capt. J. D. Henley 


1 


1828 


Va. 


Name not given 


17 


" 


" 


Name not given 


8 


«' 


•* 


Name not given 


5 


" 


• • 


Name not given 


20 (approximately) 


" 


Ky. 


Name not given 


60 (approximately) 


" 


Ga. 


Name not given 


43 


1829 


Va. 


Rev. T. P. Hunt 


18 


" 


" 


Edward Colston 


6 


" 


Md. 


Miss Margaret Mercer 


IS 


" 


" 


J. L. Smith 


12 


" 


«• 


Governor Ridgeley 


400 (this case not certain) 


1830 


Va. 


Dr. Tilden 


6 


" 


" 


Pretlow 


3 


" 


" 


G. W. Holcomb 


5 , ., X 


" 


" 


Name not given 


? (one family) 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 



213 



Year. 


State. 


Slaves Offered by 


Number Offered. 


1830 


Va. 


A lady 
A lady 
Name not given 


So 

12 

? (all his slaver 




•1 


" 


W. H. Fitzhugh 


300 (approximately 


■> 


" 


" 


Miss Blackburn 


12 




" 


" 


Miss Van Meter 


7 




41 


'* 


Name not given 


7 




" 


" 


John Morton 


2 




" 


" 


Noah Maund 


9 




;; 


(4 


John Matthews 

? 
John B. Can- 


6 

2 




'• 


•• 


10 




" 


41 


Name not given 


6 




" 


" 


A lady 


50 




" 


" 


A lady 


I 




" 


*' 


Mrs. Merry 


4 




" 


" 


Mrs Ann Tinsley 


2 




'• 


Md. 


F. S. Anderson 
Name not given 
Mr. Bell 
J. Hughes 


6 

20 

2 

1 




u 


Ga. 


Joel Early 
Name not given 
C. Bolton 


30 
1 
9 




.. 


Tenn. 


Judge Wm. Brown 
Rev. Williamson 


15 
23 




- 


Ky. 


Richard Bibb 

J. A. Jacobs 

W. L. Breckenridge 


60 
I 

14 




" 


Miss. 


Dr. Silas Hamilton 


22 




" 


? 


Francis Kinlock 


1 




•• 


? 


Richard Holmes 


30 




•• 


? 


J. B. Blackburn 


12 




1831 


Va. 


H. Robinson 
Dr. Matthews 
Rev. John Stockdell 
William Johnson 
Name not given 
Name not given 


1 
1 

31 

12 

6 

3 




" 


Md. 


Thomas Davis 


4 




.. 


N.C. 


Williams 

Gen. Jacobs 


8 

7 




•. 


Ky. 


L. W. Green 
Lee White 


1 
? 




•* 


Tenn. 


Name not given 


4 




*• 


Miss. 


Mrs. E, Greenfield 


18 




1832 


Va. 


Dr. Wilson 
George Reynolds 
T. O. Taylor 
Mrs. A. R. Page 
Mrs. A. R. Page 
Rev. M. B. Cox 
Name not given 
Two gentlemen 


3 

7 

9 

15 

14 

I 

13 

11 





214 



THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 



Year. 


State. 


Slaves Offered by 


Number Offered. 


1832 


Va. 


Name not given 


17 (approximately) 






Name not given 


14 




" 


A lady 


1 




N. C. 


J. A. Gray 


14 






Name not given 


7 


*' 


" 


A lady 


4 




s. c. 


Mr. Stewart 


14 


" 


Ga. 


Dr. Bradley 


46 


** 


Tenn. 


Name not given 


8 


1833 


Va. 


Dr. Aylett Hawes 


109 


" 


" 


Theophilue Gamble 


2 


** 




Robert Coiner 


2 


44 


" 


Silas Henton 


2 


44 


** 


Rev. Hanks 


9 


44 


Md. 


Col. Wm. Jones 


13 




Ky. 


Wm. O. Dudley 


12 


'* 


u 


Cyrus Walker 


6 






Mrs. Mary Wycliffe 


7 


" 


11 


Rev. J. D. Paxton 


5 


44 




A. M. and D. Caldwell 


4 


44 


44 


Mrs. Powell 


3 


* 4 


44 


Rev. J. C. Young 


2 


44 




Heirs of Dr. A. Todd 


4 


44 




Jonathan Becroft 


3 






Rev. D. Blackburn 


2 


** 


44 


James Hood 


3 


44 


44 


Dr. B. Roberts 


1 


44 


44 


John Holson 


1 


44 


41 


A. J. Alexander 


1 


44 


Tenn. 


George Ewing 


10 


44 


44 


Dr. McGehee 


1 


" 


44 


Robert Caldwell 


1 


'* 


Ga, 


Rev. Ripley 


14 


*' 


O. 


Benj. Johnson 


6 


** 


111. 


Cyrus Edwards 


1 


1834 


Va. 


Johnson Cleveland 


? 


44 


N. C. 


Name not given 


4 


44 


Miss. 


Name not given 


19 


44 


Ga. 


Name not given 


1 


1835 


Va. 


Isaac Noves 


25 


" 


44 


Thos. Higginbotham 


50 


" 




Name not given 


23 






Name not given 


7 


" 


44 


Rev. J. M. Brown 


1 


" 


44 


Dawson 


SO 


" 


44 


Gen. Blackburn 


50 


" 


44 


James Ogden 


5 


" 


44 


Name not given 


? (several) 


•' 


44 


Miss Martha Walker 


16 


" 


44 


Mrs. A. R. Page 


4 


" 


44 


J. T. Atkinson 


? (several) 


•■ 


44 


Wever 


25 


" 


D. C. 


Name not given 


1 




Tenn. | 


Rev. F. A. Ross 


21 



COLONIZATION AND EMANCIPATION 



215 



Year. 


State. 


Slaves Offered by 


Numbered. 


I83S 


Tenn. 


Name not given 


20 




" 


Alexander Donelson 


20 


'• 


" 


Name not given 


20 


" 


Ga. 


Name not given 


I 


•' 


" 


Name not given 


8 


" 


La. 


H. M. Childers 


30 


'• 


Miss. 


Name not given 


20 


«• 


" 


William Foster 


21 


«« 


" 


Brazile 


? (four families) 


" 


" 


Mr. Randolph 


21 


" 


" 


Name not given 


150 


" 


? 


Name not given 


4 


> Tote 




3.300 



CHAPTER V 

Colonization and the African Slave Trade 

The American Colonization Society was organized in 
1817. Its active opposition to the African Slave Trade 
began that same year, and did not end until the last slaver 
had been driven from the African Coast. Indeed, within 
two weeks of the first election of officers of the Society, a 
memorial was presented to Congress, praying that body to 
bestir itself to put an end to the traffic. 1 The following 
year a similar memorial was presented. It was the Coloni- 
zationist leader, Charles Fenton Mercer, who secured the 
passage of the Anti-Slave Trade Act of March 3rd, 1819, 
and the passage of that act is in large measure due to the 
efforts of the Colonization Society. 2 By the terms of the 
act, Africans illegally taken from their native land and 
recaptured by the authorities of the United States Govern- 
ment were to be returned to the coast of Africa. It pro- 
vided, further, for the appointment of agents of the United 
States to look after such recaptured slaves upon their 
return. 

President Monroe, who construed very liberally the terms 
of the Act, cooperated with the Society, sending agents and 
ships, and selecting as the location for the point of resettle- 
ment of returned natives the same portion of the African 
coast as that occupied by the Society. In short, he so con- 
strued the act as to make the government a partner in the 
efforts of the Colonizationists, though the government con- 
fined its cooperation to the purposes set forth in the Act, 
the selection of territory as an asylum for recaptured Afri- 
cans. It was under this unofficial understanding between 

1 African Repository, vol. xviii, p. 129 ff. 

2 Ibid., vol. xv, p. 300. 

216 



COLONIZATION AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 21^ 

the government and the Society that Mills and Burgess 
were sent out to explore the coast and recommend a point 
for the settlement. In his report Burgess— for Mills had 
died before reaching America — called attention to the de- 
struction caused by the slave trade, and recommended as 
the most important objects the Society could keep in mind, 
from the point of view of its influence upon Africa: (i) the 
suppression of the slave trade, and (2) the elevation of the 
natives. 3 

In 1820 the Society, in a memorial, urged upon Congress 
the need of an agreement among the maritime powers 
"which shall leave no shelter to those who deserve to be 
considered as the common enemies of mankind." 4 The 
committee to which the memorial was referred reported a 
bill which contained a provision declaring the slave trade 
to be piracy. Again, in 1822, the same body was memorial- 
ized to take further measures in opposition to the slave 
trade, and was advised that colonization on the west African 
coast by civilized powers, was one of the most effective 
remedies for that trade. Late in February, 1823, Mercer 
secured a unanimous vote in the House declaring slave trad- 
ers pirates. 5 

Indeed, the birth of that settlement which, before the cen- 
tury was half passed, was to become the Republic of Li- 
beria, must be considered the result of the cooperation of 
the United States Government and the group of coloniza- 
tion philanthropists. The first endeavored to establish an 
asylum for recaptured Africans. The second hoped to es- 
tablish a home for those free negroes from America who 
desired to be free not only from physical but from mental 

3 Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American Colonization 
Society, MS., vol. i, p. 33 ff. . , . . 

* African Repository, vol. xvm, p. 129 ft.; Origin, Constitution, 
and Proceedings of American Colonization Society, MS., vol. 1, pp. 

s African Repository, vol. xviii, p. 129 fL; Minutes of Board of 
Managers of American Colonization Society, MS., March 4, 1819, 
Dec. 10, 1819; Origin, Constitution, and Proceedings of American 
Colonization Society, MS., vol. i, p. 123 ff. 



2l8 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

slavery, for nowhere in the United States was the negro 
really free in 1820; for those slaves whose masters, under 
the influence of moral suasion, might desire to emancipate; 
and to establish a colony which would close that part of the 
African coast to the trader in West Africa negroes. The 
first direct and tangible steps taken in the colonization enter- 
prise were taken by the Government rather than by the 
Society. The first vessel sent to the African coast was 
chartered and paid for by the Government. The first 
agents received salaries from the government, and the So- 
ciety was backed by the appropriation of $100,000 contained 
in the Act of 1819. 6 

Already by 1826 the colony had become so effective a bar- 
rier to the slave-trade that a French trader threatened to fit 
out a piratical expedition and make war on the colony for 
its interference with his business. 7 In 1827 at the annual 
meeting of the Society, the powers of Europe and America 
were called upon to adopt further restrictive measures 
against an apparently increasing trade. Mercer there called 
attention to the fact that in 1824 two hundred and eighteen 
slave vessels had carried away from their homes 120,000 
victims. He wished the time to come when the trade would 
be stamped with "the seal of indelible infamy." 8 At this 
time Dr. William Thornton, doubtless with the object of 
making the colony an effective barrier against the trade, was 
urging the Society to obtain territory for a thousand miles 
along the coast, even if the width of the territory was not 
more than a single mile. 9 

Certainly those Americans who were fighting the traffic 
could have asked for no more effective or energetic colonial 
agent than was now in the colony, Jehudi Ashmun. Under 
his administration and, indeed, largely due to his exertion, 

6 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept. No. 283, pp. 247-249. 
^Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., May 23, 1826. 

8 African Repository, vol. ii, pp. 357-358. 

9 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Thornton to 
Gurley, April 11, 1827. 



COLONIZATION AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 2IO, 

the slave trade had ceased it seemed along the hundred miles 
of coast over which the Liberian settlers, not over 1200 souls 
in 1828, assumed jurisdiction. Rev. Leonard Bacon, in his 
eulogy upon Ashmun in 1828, declared of Cape Montserado 
that, while a few years ago it was " literally consecrated to 
the devil " and cursed as a port of entry for the unspeakable 
slave ship, at the time of Ashmun's death " for a hundred 
miles no slave trader dares to spread his canvas." 10 

Dr. Randall went out as colonial agent upon the death of 
Mr. Ashmun. He urged the building and improving of 
fortifications in the colony in order that it might be effective 
in its fight against the slave trader. He recommended that 
a government vessel should cruise for some months along 
the Liberian coast and watch the movements of the trader. 
Officers of the Society in this country called upon the Presi- 
dent and Secretary of the Navy in order to secure action 
upon the agent's request. 11 The official effort was seconded 
by the Philadelphia Quaker, Elliot Cresson, who wrote : " I 
wish as our friend Key has influence with Old Hickory, thee 
would occasionally hint to him the advantage which we 
might derive, from certain welltimed suggestion, such as 
keeping a sharp lookout on the African Coast by a swift 
cruiser — or if possible making her a packet on her outward 
voyage." 12 

During the years 1830-1839 the Society was too busy try- 
ing to make its resources meet its expenditures and trying to 
take care of the negroes offered to it, or settled in its colony, 
or meeting the furious opposition of the Garrisonians, to 
continue its direct efforts toward the abolition of the slave 
trade; and in 1839 the general agent reported an alarming 
increase in the number of African victims taken away from 
the very vicinity of the colony. The influence of that trade 
had involved the neighboring tribes in a war which endan- 

10 L. Bacon, Funeral Oration on Jehudi Ashmun, New Haven, 
Conn., 1828. , , . _ , . . c 

11 Minutes of Board of Managers of American Colonization so- 
ciety, MS., April 13, 1829. # 

12 Letters of American Colonization Society, Mb., Cresson to uur- 
ley, Philadelphia, Pa., December 7, 1829. 



220 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

gered the peace of the colony, and Wilkeson pressed the 
matter before the Secretary of the Navy. 13 

When the Society was reorganized in 1839 there were 
sent to the colonial governor, Thomas Buchanan, positive 
instructions urging the passage of a law forbidding "any 
communication between the citizens of Liberia and the slave 
traders/' and punishing Liberian citizens violating the law 
" in the same manner as are citizens or subjects of any civi- 
lized State, who, are guilty of dealing with or succoring an 
enemy in time of war." They urged the death penalty for 
any participation by a Liberian in the business of the trader. 
The reason for these strict instructions will be understood 
when it is stated that there were some — there appears no 
evidence that many were guilty of it — among the Liberians 
who had themselves been redeemed from the chains of slav- 
ery, who were actively engaged in assisting the slave trader ; 
and the Society felt that the whole colonization scheme was 
jeopardized by such conduct. Indeed, Judge Wilkeson 
thought that the strongest tie that bound many persons to 
the colonization cause was their belief that it was the only 
hope of putting an end to a very unpopular business. Wilke- 
son commented : " It was natural to suppose that those who 
had returned to the land of their fathers . . . would urge 
increasing war against this system of cruelty so long prac- 
ticed upon their brethren." He thought that if it became 
known publicly that colonists had aided the slavers, "the 
colonies would be denounced and execrated from one end 
of the Union to the other." 14 

The new Governor was another Ashmun in his hatred of 
the slaver and his energy in routing him from the neighbor- 
hood of the colony. During the first year of his adminis- 
tration he brought about the capture of a slaving ship carry- 
ing the flag of the United States and sent her to America 
for trial. She was the schooner Euphrates. 15 He further 

13 Ibid., Wilkeson to Secretary of the Navy, February 12, 1839. 

14 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., July 25, 1839. 

15 African Repository, vol. xvii, pp. 246-247. 



COLONIZATION AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 221 

went boldly out with a company of colonists and captured 
out of their prisons a number of native Africans who were 
held in waiting for the arrival of the next slaver. 16 

There was not a little difference of opinion as to the most 
effective means of abolishing the trade. There were those 
who thought that it would automatically cease as slavery was 
abolished in the civilized nations that still endured it. There 
were others who supposed that the iniquity would never be 
suppressed until the maritime powers jointly and constantly 
patrolled the waters along the west African coast. But in 
the early forties the predominating view, it seems, was that 
the planting of colonies along the west coast would make 
impossible a traffic between the slave traders and the natives 
of the interior, and that such colonies, planted by the civilized 
powers, presented the only efficient remedy for that traffic. 

Thomas Foxwell Buxton, who had been so much inter- 
ested in the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, himself 
believed that that very abolition had stimulated a disguised 
form of the slave trade with that colony. The recently 
emancipated negroes of those Islands refused to work, and 
the result was the importation of so-called free negro labor 
from the African coast. Those imported were, many of 
them, either stolen outright or brought in ignorance to the 
West Indies, and the result was the legitimating of what 
had before been illegal. 17 This was also Perry's view. 18 
Buxton believed that the only satisfactory remedy was the 
establishment along the coast of civilized colonies which 
would not endure the slave trade within their jurisdictions 
and which would provide an effective barrier between those 
who operated slave vessels along the coast and those within 
the interior who were willing to sell their fellow Africans. 

In this view the Colonizationists of America heartily con- 
curred. 19 Indeed they had had a practical verification of 

18 For an interesting account qf the expedition see African Re- 
pository, vol. xv, pp. 277-282. 

17 Sir T. F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy, 
passim ; London Quarterly Review, March, 1839. 

18 African Repository, vol. xvii, pp. 85-86. 

19 Ibid., vol. xvii, pp. 246-247. 



222 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

the value of this method. Bassa Cove, one of the Liberian 
settlements, had once been the seat of the slave trade. From 
five to six thousand natives had been packed into slave 
vessels and taken from that point annually ; after the settle- 
ment of that point by the Colonizationists the trade was 
completely broken up. Cape Montserado itself had once 
been a depot for the detention of captured natives. Slavers 
touched there and carried away annually from two to three 
thousand native Africans into slavery. After the settle- 
ment of the cape and its government by the Colonizationists 
the slave trade ceased. 20 

There is abundant evidence to the value of the colony as 
a contributor to the suppression of the slave trade. In 
April, 1842, Secretary of State Webster made inquiries of 
Captains Charles H. Bell and John S. Paine, both of whom 
had seen service along the west African coast and were 
familiar with the influence exerted by the colony of Li- 
beria, as to the length of coast along which the trade 
was carried on. Those officers replied that the distance 
from the northernmost to the southernmost points along the 
coast, where the slave trader put in for slaves was 3600 
miles, but that the influence of the British, French, and 
especially the American settlements was so directly hostile 
to, and effective against, the trade, that from this extent of 
coast should be subtracted 600 miles, leaving only 3000 
miles of coast along which the slavers actually carried on 
their work. 21 Captain Arabin, of Her Majesty's Navy, tes- 
tified : " Wherever the influence of Liberia extends, the 
slave trade has been abandoned by the natives, and the 
peaceful pursuits of legitimate commerce established in its 
place." 22 

M. C. Perry, who had commanded the United States Na- 
val forces on the west coast of Africa, wrote in 1844 : " So 
far as the influence of the colonists has extended, it has been 

20 Ibid., vol. xvii, p. 248. 

21 27th Cong., 3d sess., H. Rept., No. 283, pp. 768-769. 

22 African Repository, vol. xvii, p. 331, Nov., 1841. 



COLONIZATION AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 223 

exerted to suppress the slave trade, and their endeavors in 
this respect have been eminently successful; and it is by 
planting these settlements . . . along the whole extent of 
coasts, from Cape Verde to Benguela, that the exportation 
of slaves will be most effectually prevented." He favored 
appropriations from Congress in aid of the Society for this 
purpose as well as others. 23 Two years later he declared: 
" It is useless to talk of destroying this vile traffic in any 
other way than by belting the whole coast with Christian 
settlements, unless the European powers should follow the 
example of the United States and declare it to be piracy, 
and then faithfully enforce the law," and he thought that 
at that time the only powers that were in earnest about the 
destruction of the trade were the United States and Great 
Britain. 24 

Not only did the colonial governors effectively prohibit 
the slave trade within the jurisdiction of the colony, but 
they also provided needed information as to the points along 
the coast at which the trade was still carried on. Upon 
several occasions reports were received that certain points 
along the coast and surrounded by the territory of the col- 
ony — f or it was years before the colony obtained exclusive 
jurisdiction over a continuous line of coast — were used as 
centres of the trade. The Society almost invariably set at 
once to work to purchase these points. 23 Thousands of dol- 
lars were given by Americans for this specific purpose. 
Governor Roberts in 1843 notified the Society that at a 
single depot, between Cape Mount and Cape Palmas, both 
surrounded by Liberian territory, four hundred slaves had 
but recently been taken away in slavers. At once the ques- 
tion of the purchase of that territory was agitated by the 
Directors of the Society. 26 

2 3 African Repository, June, 1844. vol. xx, pp. 167-168 ; Letter of 
M. C. Perry to David Henshaw, Secretary of the Navy, January 4, 
1844. 

24 African Repository, vol. xxii, pp. 85-86, March, 1846. 

25 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Gurley to Rev. 
S. Cornelius, July 28, 1843- . „ „ T , , _ , , 

26 Ibid., Gurley to Cornelius, July 28, 1843 ! Journal of Board of 
Directors of American Colonization Society, MS., vol. iv, p. 24. 



224 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

By 1845 there were, it seems, but two points along a coast 
line of seven hundred miles, over which the influence of the 
colony extended, where the slavers continued to frequent, 
and they were points which the Society had not had the 
means to purchase. It should be remembered that twenty 
years before the whole of that coast line was dotted with 
depots, slave factories as they were called, where the slaver 
came to take away hundreds of slaves in a single vessel, 
scores of the human cargo perishing before the vessel had 
reached its destination, while there were, in 1845, but two 
depots that remained, and they without the limits of the 
Colony. It was probably a fair estimate that the Society 
made, that it was saving every year, or was the leading 
instrument in saving from perpetual bondage in some other 
land or from a horrible death on a slave ship, 20,000 
Africans. 27 

If one may venture to estimate the number of native 
Africans saved from either of these alternatives by the 
influence of the American Colonization Society, would it 
be too much to say that not fewer than 100,000 negroes 
were in this way saved to freedom ? When the Garrisonian 
asked the Colonizationist : " What are you doing to bring 
about the immediate emancipation of the slaves in the 
United States?" the Colonizationist could and did reply: 
" We are doing all we can to secure the entire abolition of 
slavery in the United States as soon as may be consistent 
with constitutional guarantees, peace, and the preservation 
of the American Union. What are you doing to bring about 
the immediate abolition of the slave trade ? " And the Gar- 
risonian was silent on the efforts of the Society to bring to 
a speedy end that outlawed and inhuman traffic. 

For many years there was active cooperation between the 
Society and the Government in relation to this trade. In 
1844 the Society kept an agent in Liberia whose duty it was 
to deliver parcels and packages sent to the American squad- 
ron patrolling the African coast waters. Also the Govern- 

S7 African Repository, May, 1845, vol. xxi, p. 145 ff. 



COLONIZATION AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 22 5 

ment was allowed to land, free of duty, at the port of 
Monrovia, all provisions, stores, and supplies used by the 
squadron. 28 It also received hundred of recaptured Africans 
and settled them in Liberia. The largest single cargo of 
slaves thus sent to Liberia was that sent in the " Pons " in 
1846, for whose support the Government paid the Society 
thirty-odd thousand dollars. 29 

The Society did not hesitate to investigate cases in which 
citizens of New York or the New England States were re- 
ported to be engaged in operating vessels which were ac- 
tively engaged in the slave trade. 30 And when there was 
talk of abrogating that part of the Webster- Ashburton treaty 
which related to the patrolling of the waters along the Afri- 
can coast, and at other times when there was some discus- 
sion of the advisability of either withdrawing or diminishing 
the size of the squadron kept in those waters, the leaders of 
the Society consistently protested against such withdrawal 
or diminution. 31 

It will be of interest to note the opinion of Secretary of 
State Everett in 1853. Everett said : 

Wherever a colony is established on the coast of Africa under the 
direction of a Christian power in Europe or America, there the slave 
trade disappears ; not merely from the coast of the colony, but from 
the whole interior of the country which found an outlet at any 
point on the coast. . . . The last slave mart in that region, the Gal- 
linas, has, within a short time, I believe, come within the jurisdic- 
tion of the American colony of Liberia. Now, along that whole 
line of coast . . . from every port and every harbor of which the 
foreign slave trade was carried on — within the memory of man, it 
has entirely disappeared. . . . And what career is there opened for 
any colored man in Europe or America, more praiseworthy, more 
inviting than thus to form as it were, in his own person a portion 

28 Journal of Executive Committee of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., June 6, 1844, pp. 381-383. 

29 Ibid., May 1, 1851, p. 187; Minutes of Board of Directors of 
American Colonization Society, MS., January 16, 1861, pp. 367-368; 
January 22, 1862, p. 380. 

30 Letters of American Colonization Society, MS., Tracy to Mc- 
Lain, Boston, April 23, 1846; Minutes of Board of Directors of 
American Colonization Society, MS., January 18, 1855, p. 218. 

31 Minutes of Board of Directors of American Colonization So- 
ciety, MS., January 20, 1853. P- 120 5 January 18, 1855, pp. 213-214. 

15 



226 THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY 

of that living cordon stretching along the coast and barring its 
whole extent from the approaches of this traffic. 32 

Professor Hart, commenting upon the results of the Colo- 
nization movement, says that, with the backing of the Fed- 
eral Government and its auxiliary societies the Society was 
yet not able to oversome "distance, malaria, savage neigh- 
bors, and a tropical climate." 33 If the positions taken in 
this study have been successfully maintained, that statement 
is inadequate. Not only were all those difficulties, except 
distance, satisfactorily overcome, but, from the point of 
view of Africa alone, there were brought about two impor- 
tant results : ( I ) the establishment upon the west African 
coast of a model republic for Africans, and (2) the salva- 
tion of many thousands of natives from the holds of miser- 
able slave ships. If viewed alone in the light of its influ- 
ence upon Africa, was not this something? Indeed, was it 
not worth the effort required to bring the Society into being 
and to preserve it for so many years ? 

32 Edward Everett, Address at Anniversary of American Coloni- 
zation Society, MS., January 18, 1853. 

33 Hart, p. 163. 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, on unhealthfulness 
of Liberia, 55; leading Garri- 
sonians once Colonizationists, 
90-91 ; rise of Abolition oppo- 
sition to Colonization, 90, 94- 
95 ; effect of opposition, 124, 
136-141, 157-166; Garrisonians 
and radical slaveholders the 
Colonizationist's bitterest en- 
emies. 125; debates over Colo- 
nization, 125-126; two classes 
of, 126; radical Abolition 
founded upon a sectional sen- 
timent, 127, I3&-I39. 166; 
views on slavery and the 
Union, compared with views 
of Colonizationists, 127, 146- 
149; methods used in criticis- 
ing Colonization, 128-136; 
amount of propaganda, 140; 
Abolitionist and Colonization- 
ist views of slavery contrasted, 
142-145, 151 ; abusive language 
to slaveholders, 152; injustice 
of such language, 152-154; 
confused with Colonization- 
ists in the South, 160; Aboli- 
tion and the division in the 
Methodist Church, 163-166; 
cooperation between Aboli- 
tionists and Colonizationists 
urged, 1828, 166; wherein 
Abolitionist criticism failed, 
171-172; propaganda discour- 
ages emancipations, 172-175 ; 
Birney on the effects of Abo- 
lition upon the South, 174- 
175 ; effect of opposition to 
Colonization on the Middle 
States, 177; Colonizationists 
tend to become moderate Abo- 
litionists, 180-214. 
American Colonization Society, 
a national movement, 0-10, 75, 
100, 127 ; influence not to be 
measured by number of ne- 
groes sent to Liberia, II ; mo- 
tives of organizers, 47~5o; 



slaveholders as presidents of, 
74; effect of Pro-Slavery Ar- 
gument on Colonizationist 
sentiment in the South, 155- 
156; effect of Southampton 
Insurrection on sentiment re- 
garding, in Va. and Md., 92; 
organization of, 46-47, 50-51, 
60; finances of, 57-65, 77-78, 
84-85, 88, 90, 101-107, 123-124; 
geographical distribution of 
contributions, 65, 123-124; 
seeks financial aid from Con- 
gress, 54, 70-71 ; investigation 
of Society's debt, 103-104; 
auxiliary societies, 61 ; senti- 
ment toward, in the South, 58- 
59, 78-88, 92; attitude of New 
England clergy, 63-64; expe- 
ditions sent out, 55, 67, 68 ; 
character of emigrants, 89; 
table of emigrants, 1820-1830, 
89; cost to Society per emi- 
grant, 88; attitude of religious 
denominations, 78-79 ; attitude 
of state legislatures, 79-8p; 
Clay's optimism, 77; dissatis- 
faction of auxiliary societies, 
105-106; secession of auxil- 
iaries, 95-101; demand for re- 
organization, 106; reorganiza- 
tion, 1 10-122; a new constitu- 
tion proposed, 115-116; adopt- 
ed, 120; attitude toward the 
Union, 145, 150, 166; Birney's 
and Gerrit Smith's reasons for 
deserting, 176; Colonization 
and Abolition confused in the 
South, 160 ; opposition to, in 
North and West, 90; Aboli- 
tionist opposition, 90, 94~95 ; 
effect of, 136, 157-166; effect 
of Colonization movement 
upon emancipations, 180-214; 
Colonization Society opposes 
African slave trade, 215-225; 
number of Africans saved 
from slavery by, 223. See also 



227 



228 



INDEX 



Abolition, Emancipation, Gar- 
rison, Slavery, Slave Trade, 
etc. 

Anti-Slave-Trade Act of 1819, 
influence of Colonization So- 
ciety in securing passage of, 
54, 215 ; President Monroe's 
interpretation of, 55, 215-216. 

Ashmun, Jehudi, sent to Africa, 
68; Ashmun and the slave 
trade, 217-218. 

Ayres, Dr. Eli, arrives in Africa 
as agent, 67 ; Liberia ceded to 
Ayres and Stockton, 68; in- 
structed to purchase additional 
territory in Africa, 69. 

Birney, James G., once a Colo- 
nizationist, 90, 91 ; on detach- 
ing Virginia from the slave 
States by a scheme of eman- 
cipation and colonization, 174- 
175 ; reason given for desert- 
ing the Colonizationists, 176; 
Garrison inquires for, 178. 

Breckenridge, Robert J., 167 ; on 
relation of Colonizationists to 
slaveholders, 169; on influence 
of Colonization Society on 
emancipations, 187. 

Caldwell, E. B., 43-44, 46, 181. 

Calhoun, John C, 190. 

Carey, Mathew, 161. 

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 
74- 

Church, attitude of Methodist 
toward slavery and the So- 
ciety, 10, 79, 163-164; Presby- 
terian, 78, 91; Friends (Quak- 
ers), 78; Episcopal, 79; Dutch 
Reformed, 79; Congregation- 
al, 79; Unitarian, 79; effect of 
abolition opposition on Colo- 
nization sentiment in the 
churches, 138, 139, 163 ; slavery 
and the division in the Meth- 
odist Church, 163-166. 

Clay, Henry, 51 ; on the property 
value of slaves in the South, 
21 ; on the future of slavery, 
23-24 ; attitude toward slavery, 
29 ; on the status of free ne- 
groes, S3] on colonization, 39; 
organization of American Col- 
onization Society, 46; officer 



in, 51 ; speech at annual meet- 
ing, 1827, urging help from 
Federal Government, 76-77 ; 
on the gradual abolition of 
slavery through colonization, 
76-77 ; politics and Coloniza- 
tion, 83-84; on danger to 
Union, from Abolitionist view 
of slavery, 147-148; on effects 
of Garrisonian Abolition, 161. 
Cocke, General John H., 82-83, 

1 53-1 54; 

Colonization, Maryland House 
of Representatives on slavery 
and, 30; Gerrit Smith on, 32; 
essential to the welfare of the 
free negro, 37; projects be- 
fore 1817, 39-44; as the solu- 
tion of the negro problem, 
45-46; a middle state move- 
ment, 49; a means of abolish- 
ing slavery, 50; effect upon 
free negro, 52; growth of in- 
terest in, 75 ; Clay's views of 
effect of, on slavery, 76-77; 
politics and, 83-84; coloniza- 
tion an aid to emancipation, 
90; Birney advocates emanci- 
pation and colonization, for 
Virginia, 174-175 ; not the so- 
lution of the negro problem, 
177 ; effect of, on emancipa- 
tions, 1817-1850, 180-214; cause 
of the Colonization Society's 
influence, 187. 

Connecticut, 79. 

Cotton, 155. 

Delaware, 79. 

DeTocqueville, A., on slavery in 
the U. S., 19-20, 31. 

Dew, Thomas, Pro-Slavery Ar- 
gument, io-ii; effect of, on 
the South, 155, 156. 

Early, Bishop John, 166. 

Emancipation, American Colo- 
nization Society and, II, 50, 
51, 85, 162, 169, 173-174, 181; 
effect of Colonization upon, 
180-214; Maryland House of 
Representatives on, 30; atti- 
tude of South toward, 30-31 ; 
attitude of slaveholders, 38- 
39; Bishop Meade on effect of 
Colonization on, 49; legis- 



INDEX 



2 29 



lative acts restricting, 90; 
views of Garrisonians and 
Colonizationists compared and 
contrasted, 127, 142-145 ; war 
with Great Britain advocated 
as a means of emancipating 
the negro, 134; effect of Abo- 
lition on, in New Orleans, 
160; slaves offered freedom 
on condition of their removal 
to Liberia, 169 ; Birney advo- 
cates general scheme of eman- 
cipation and colonization for 
Va., 174-175; records of, diffi- 
cult' to obtain, 180; Mass. 
contributes to Society on con- 
dition that freed slaves be sent 
to Liberia, 185 ; influences dis- 
couraging emancipation, 189- 
194 ; table of emancipations, 
1825-1833, 211-214; estimates 
of number of emancipated 
slaves sent to Liberia, 214. 
Everett, Edward, 36, 214-225, 

Fitzhugh, William H., 48, 57, 59, 

85, 195- 

Free Negro, Mass. Senate on, 
28-29 ; effect of increase on 
emancipations, 29 ; property 
holdings among, in Virginia, 
31 ; DeTocqueville on, 31 ; 
sentiments of various sections 
toward, 28-37 > danger in im- 
mediate general emancipation, 
142-143 ; attitude of Coloniza- 
tion Society toward, 143, 182; 
effect of Colonization enter- 
prise upon, 162; Gerrit Smith 
accuses Colonization Society 
of neglecting, 176. 

Frelinghuysen, Theodore, 80. 

Friends (Quakers), Society of, 
64. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 90, 91 ; 
hostility to Colonization, 125- 
179; views on slavery and the 
Union, compared with those 
of Colonizationists, 127, 142- 
149, 150; methods of criticism, 
128-136; effect of opposition 
to Colonization, 136-141, 157- 
166, 177, 178; sectional basis 
of Garrisonism, 138-139; Gar- 
risonians in politics, 139; 



propaganda, 140; resolutions 
on dissolution of the Union, 
149; language to slaveholders, 
152-154. 

Georgia, 49, 81. 

Giles, William B., 83-84. 

Grimke, Sarah M., 178. 

Gurley, R. R., sent to Liberia, 
73 ; proposes a constitution for 
Liberia, 74-75 ; reports on con- 
ditions in, 75 ; influence in 
Colonization movement, 73- 
74 ; on the rise of Abolition 
opposition, 94-95; on relations 
between parent and auxiliary 
societies, 99, 100; views on re- 
organization of the Society, 
117-118; debates with Abo- 
litionists, 126; on the effect of 
Garrisonian opposition, 137- 
138; on Abolition and Coloni- 
zation propaganda, 140; view 
of the American slave system, 
157 ; on the purchase of free- 
dom for slaves, 183. 

Harrison, J. B., reply of, to Pro- 
Slavery Argument, II, 155- 
156; encouragement given by 
Colonization Society, 11; con- 
fers with New Englanders, 
75 ; hopes for abolition of 
slavery, 167. 

Hart, A. B., 225. 

Hopkins, Dr. Samuel, 39-41. 

Illinois, 162. 
Indiana, 79, 80. 

Jackson, Andrew, Vice-Presi- 
dent of Colonization Society, 

Si- 

Jefferson, Thomas, 40, 41-42. 

Kentucky, 79, 173, 187. 

Key, Francis Scott, attitude to- 
ward slavery, 17-19; and the 
organization of the Coloniza- 
tion Society, 43-44, 51 ; agent 
for Colonization, 57 ; on effect 
of Abolitionism on welfare of 
the negro, 160; on number of 
slaves whose freedom could 
be secured on condition of re- 
moval to Africa, 169, 186 ; 
hope of ultimate abolition of 
slavery, 175 ; on Colonization 
and abolition of slavery, 181. 



230 



INDEX 



Latrobe, J. H. B., on slavery, 
23; a leader in the Maryland 
Colonization Society, 61 ; rea- 
son given for secession of 
Maryland auxiliary society, 97. 
Liberator, The, on motives of 
organizers of Colonization 
Society, 47; charges against 
Colonizationists, 100, 169-170; 
amount of space given to op- 
position to Colonization, 125, 
132; character of criticism, 
130; exults over the debt of 
Colonization Society, 132 ; lan- 
guage to slaveholders, 152-154. 
Liberia, ship line between U. S. 
and, proposed, 35; healthful- 
ness of, 55-57, 69-70; bad 
news from, 1820; 66-67; ex- 
peditions to, 55, 67; deaths of 
agents, 67; land purchased, 
67; land ceded to Stockton 
and Ayres, 68; considered as 
a trust by the Colonization 
Society, 68; American flag 
raised, 68; the colony named, 
71 ; discontent among colo- 
nists, 71-73; constitution pro- 
posed for, 75 ; Gurley's report 
on conditions in, 75; number 
of emigrants and cost per 
emigrant to, 88-89; table of 
emigrants sent by Society to, 
89; character of emigrants, 
89; independent settlements of 
auxiliary societies, 95 ; unwise 
administration in, 102, 107- 
110; financial difficulties limit 
expeditions to, 105 ; recently 
emancipated slaves make poor 
colonists, 108; Abolitionist 
methods of discouraging emi- 
gration to, 141, 172, 189 ; slaves 
offered freedom on condition 
of returning to, 169; becomes 
chief aim of Colonizationists, 
177; runaway slaves request 
to go to, 182; Massachusetts 
demands that freed slaves be 
sent to, 185; Key on number 
of slaves willing to go to, 186; 
Finley on same, 188; unwil- 
lingness of negroes to go to, 
191 ; number of emancipated 
slaves sent to, 214; Liberia 
and the slave trade, 216-217; a 



barrier to the slave trade, 217, 
221 ; U. S. cooperates with 
Colonization Society in end- 
ing slave trade in, 223-224; 
Edward Everett on influence 
of Colonization in ending 
slave trade, 224-225. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 145. 

Louisiana Colonization Society, 
61, 122. 

McDonogh, John, 61, 183; be- 
quest to Society, 63 ; value of 
his slaves, and his plans for 
freeing them, 168, 197. 
McLane, R. M., 184. 
Madison, James, 61, 62, 88. 
Manumission, see Emancipation. 
Marshall, John, 61, 62, 87. 
Maryland, House of Represen- 
tatives, on slavery, 30; Coloni- 
zation Society, 61 ; legislative 
appropriation, 1831, 62-63; at- 
titude of legislature toward 
society, 79; effect of South- 
ampton Insurrection in, 92; 
secession of Maryland Coloni- 
zation Society from parent 
society, 95, 96-98; excludes 
ardent spirits from Cape 
Palmas, 98; expeditions sent 
out from Maryland, 98; Mary- 
land colonizationists not con- 
trolled by slave holders, 101 ; 
influence in bringing about re- 
organization of the society, 
115; effect of abolitionist op- 
position in, 160; Gurley on the 
influence of the colonization 
scheme on slaveholders in 
Maryland, 170-171. 

Massachusetts, 41, 79, 80, 185. 

Meade, Bishop William, 34, 49, 
57, 58-59. 

Mercer, C. F., 16, 34, 54, 57, 61, 
75, 215-217. 

Methodist Church, 163-166. 

Mills, Samuel J., 42, 43, 52, 53. 

Mississippi, Colonization So- 
ciety, 61 ; sentiment in, 81 ; ef- 
fect of reorganization of par- 
ent society upon sentiment in, 
122; Methodist Church in, 165. 

Monroe, James, 52, 55, 90, 188. 

New England, 41, 77-78, 137- 
138. 



INDEX 



23I 



New Jersey, 79. 

New Orleans, 160, 210. 

New York, 79, 106, no, 114-115, 

117, 120, 177. 
North Carolina, 59, 188-189. 

Ohio, 61, 79, 81. 

Otis, Harrison Gray, 146. 

Page, Mrs. Ann R., 152-153- 
Paine, Elijah, 60, 186. 
Panic of 1837, 191. 
Pennsylvania, 80, 98, 114-115, 

163, 177. 

Perry, M. C, 220, 221-222. 

" Pro-Slavery Argument," 10 ; J. 
B. Harrison's reply, n, 155- 
156; attitude of American 
Colonization Society toward, 
n; influence of, 155, 156. 

Rhode Island, 79. 
Roberts, Governor, of Liberia, 
222. 

Sherman, Roger M., 36, 161. 

Sierra Leone, 40-41, 42, 52, 67. 

Slavery, see American Coloniza- 
tion Society, Emancipation, 
etc. 

Slave Trade, African, n, 53-54, 
70, 177, 215-225. 

Smith, Gerrit, attitude toward 
slaveholders in 1828, 16; on 
colonization, 32; contributor 
to American Colonization So- 
ciety, 60, 62; on the constitu- 
tionality of federal aid to the 
society, 86; attitude of Coloni- 
zation Society toward slavery, 
91 ; opinion of Colonization 
Society, 140; reason for de- 
serting the Colonizationists, 
176. 

South Carolina, 49, 81. 

Southwest, effect of economic 
development on question of 
slavery, 10-n, 155. 

Stiles, Ezra, 39-40. 



Stockton, Captain R. F., 67, 68. 

Tappan, Arthur, 90, 140, 178. 

Tazewell, L. W., 86. 

Tennessee, 79. 

Thornton, Dr. William, attitude 
toward slaveholders, 15-16, 
21 ; attitude toward slavery, 
28, 181 ; efforts to colonize the 
negro, 40-41 ; and the Amer- 
ican Colonization Society, 43- 
51 ; and the slave trade, 217. 

Tyler, John, 61. 

Upsur, Abel P., 61. 

Vermont, 79. 

Virginia, legislative committee 
proposes colonization, 1777, 
40 ; 1800, 41-42 ; Colonization 
Society of, 61 ; legislative ap- 
propriation for colonization, 
63 ; attitude of legislature, 
1820-1830, 70, 82-84; opposi- 
tion to federal aid to coloniza- 
tion, 82, 85-86, 87-88; effect 
of the Southampton Insurrec- 
tion on sentiment in, 92; legis- 
lature not representative of 
the State on question of sla- 
very, 93-94; Virginia Coloni- 
zationists not controlled by 
slaveholders, 101 ; effect of re- 
organization of the American 
Colonization Society upon 
sentiment in, 122; attitude of, 
toward slavery, 158-160; ef- 
fect of abolitionist opposition 
to Colonization in, 159, 160; 
constitutional scruples on the 
subject of slavery, 159. 

Washington, Bushrod, 46, 50. 
Webster, Daniel, 221. 
Weld, Theodore D., 178. 
Whittier, J. G., 179- 
Whittlesey, Elisha, 94, 117, 148. 
Wilberforce, William, 35, 91. 
Wilkeson, Samuel, 118-119, 131. 



VITA 

Early Lee Fox was born at Browntown, Virginia, Feb- 
ruary 9, 1890. He was a student at Randolph-Macon 
Academy, Front Royal, Virginia, from 1901 to 1906. He 
entered Randolph-Macon College in 1906, and received the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1909. From 1909 to 1912 he 
was instructor in History and German at Randolph-Macon 
Academy. From 1912 to 1914 he was a graduate student 
in History at the Johns Hopkins University, and received 
the degree of Master of Arts in June, 1914. The following 
year he was principal of the Accomac High School. In 
October, 191 5, he returned to the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity and resumed his graduate studies. He received the 
degree of Doctor of Philosophy in June, 1917. The follow- 
ing session he was professor of history at West Virginia 
Wesleyan College. Since October, 1918, he has been pro- 
fessor of History at Randolph-Macon College. 



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